


A Weary Soul Seeking an Echo

by Yobotica



Category: Titanfall (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Eventual Happy Ending, Grief/Mourning, I don't know how militaries actually work and I don't care, Implied/Referenced Torture, Jack/BT romance, M/M, Suicide Attempt, Violence, WIP, completely self-indulgent, spoilers for the whole game
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:27:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26532094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yobotica/pseuds/Yobotica
Summary: Set almost immediately post-Titanfall 2, Jack Cooper comes to terms with everything that happened since he first landed on Typhon. He never thought just 24 hours could change his life so much, but all he can do now is move forward.Spoilers for the whole game abound; this is a self-induglent fix-it for an eventual happy ending.
Relationships: BT-7274/Jack Cooper (Titanfall)
Comments: 87
Kudos: 113





	1. Chapter 1

It was only a week after BT... after the destruction of the Fold Weapon, that Commander Briggs asked Jack to look over the specs of available Titans. While the IMC had been dealt a huge blow with the loss of the Ark Project, they weren't gone yet, and since reinforcements were likely on the way and would arrive fresh with potentially new weapons tech, well. There was no way of knowing when these reinforcements might arrive, and the Frontier Militia needed all the Pilots they could get.

Jack resented the request, almost. He'd signed up, like most of the men he served with, to defend the Frontier from the greedy interests of the IMC, who'd been surprised to even find them living, much less thriving; who had instead hoped to find empty planets to exploit.

Only, their planets weren't empty, and the Frontier wasn't going to be exploited again - not without a fight.

Commander Briggs, though, offered him something special. While there were no Vanguard Titan chassis available, there was still the Vanguard AI, FS-1041 - whose chassis was, of course, unavailable at this time.

However, the Vanguard AIs were made to be adaptable, and while their chassis were able to be outfitted with multiple loadouts, it meant that a little extra effort could see FS-1041 could be installed into any other Titan type until another Vanguard chassis was fully built and tested, only a couple months away. It would have been sooner, but the IMC had found some success in reducing the militia's manufacturing capabilities, and most of the produced parts currently went to repair active Vanguards, first and foremost.

Jack dutifully looked over the other Titan models, though he felt he had a good idea of how they worked, given that he'd first fought them and then put BT through most of their acquired weapons and abilities, even if only just to see what they could do.

But the thought of getting his neural link scrubbed, the thought of losing the last bit of BT he had? He couldn't do it.

He didn't even want to meet with FS-1041; it felt dishonest to do so when he'd already made his decision. He wanted the Titan to get a Pilot of his own, one who wouldn't always hold the AI up to the example of another, setting them both up for disappointment.

He glanced up at the commander, leaning over a screen and squinting at something on the Northstar loadout that had caught her interest. He looked at the screen himself, at the various loadouts displayed for him, and it struck him that this was a monumental offer. The Militia SRS were going out of their way to offer him another Vanguard Titan, a rare honor when Commander Briggs hadn't even glanced at him twice before ordering a new Pilot for his Titan when she'd first seen him with BT.

He'd mulled it over a few times since, and sometimes thought it might have been easier if BT hadn't spoken up in that moment and ensured that Jack remained his Pilot. If Jack had been dismissed, his provisional rank stripped, then he wouldn't have had to witness what had become one of the worst moments of his life.

He sighed softly and the commander glanced back at him. She frowned thoughtfully, and he knew she'd seen his answer in his expression.

"Commander, I appreciate that this is a, a rare honor. But I can't do it. I'm sorry, but I don't want to scrub the link I have and pilot a new Titan. If that means a demotion back to rifleman, I wouldn't object."

The commander looked at him a moment, and he let her. Then she sighed, and nodded, and gestured at the displays around them, which shut off.

She let out a sigh. "I won't lie and say I didn't hope you'd go for it," she said. "But I do understand. They're something special, the Vanguards, and BT..." she trailed off, then shook her head. When she spoke again, her voice was soft, and the open expression on her face wasn't that of a commander, but of someone who shared his grief. "The Vanguard AI is something unique, you know? It was years of work just to build the base code, years more to teach and observe each one before they were ever installed into a Titan or linked to a Pilot. They share the same base code, and their training was almost identical, but they are all different. We put potential Vanguard Pilots through an intensive training process; all except you. The thing is, when talking about AIs like this, we knew true sentience was only a matter of time. BT _was_ special, though, and something in him changed after he linked with you. We knew that the more the Vanguards grew and worked with their pilots, the more, well, human they'd become, for lack of a better word. Each Titan has had only one Pilot, until BT, and we were all carefully screened and evaluated and trained in stewarding these AIs toward independence." 

She was watching him carefully, and to be honest, Jack had no idea what his face was doing. This was not what he'd expected. He'd wanted to be a Titan Pilot for so long, he'd obsessed over all the details he could find, but he knew, he _knew_ that BT had been special in a way he hadn't thought Titans could be. For a second, he wondered if the commander's Vanguard was...

She must have caught the question in his face, however, as she smiled. "He is," she said. "Not like BT, though. BT was linked to Tai for two years, and while he had his quirks, less than a day with you, and..." She shrugged. "It's not only that he changed, really, but _how_ he changed. He grew. What got to me was just that he spoke up, that he felt something, wanted something. You."

Jack felt his chest grow tight and finally had to look away.

She patted his shoulder. "I'm saying I get it. I can't force you to link to another Titan, and if I'm being honest, I'd expected this outcome. I hoped to talk you out of it, because we dearly need Pilots right now, but," she shrugged and patted his shoulder one last time before stepping back, "I understand. If I lost Mob, it’d be a hard choice to link to another Titan. But you and BT, you didn't just hand us a decisive victory against the IMC, you saved a lot of lives. While your promotion was unconventional, you'll retain the rank and honors of an acting Pilot. And the responsibilities," she added, a little sternly. " _If_ you continue to serve, that is. You could choose to retire, you know? We'd take care of you, set you up with a stipend and a flat, anywhere you'd like. But, while you may not have a Titan, you've turned out to be a damn good Pilot and we could still use those skills."

While the tightness in his chest didn't entirely go away, it eased, enough that Jack could look up at her again. "What are you offering?"

She smiled. "You've proven an able infiltrator. There are many places a man like you could get in and disable without a Titan or reinforcements to put the IMC on guard. It's dangerous, but you're in a unique position, and we'd allow refusal of proposed missions. I can't promise we won't ask anything outrageous, but we won't make you take anything you turn down. You' d keep your kit - the helmet's fried, but the linked jump kit is already calibrated to you; you'd just be flying solo with a shiny new helmet."

Jack stared at her a moment, and she raised a sharp brow in return. He laughed awkwardly and glanced away. "That's a lot," he said. "How long do I have to think about it?"

The commander smiled at him, almost indulgently, like he'd already said yes. "Well, you've got mandated leave for the week, an appointment with the Vanguard development team for a final interview on BT in that time, and a Psych eval in two days, so at least that long," she said. "I'm not going to sugarcoat things, Cooper, we're asking a lot, but I wouldn't ask at all if I didn't think the deal benefits us both. You need something to do, to keep busy and maybe even get a little bit of revenge. That's why you signed up in the first place, and I'd be a fool not to try and keep you however we can."

Jack nodded. If nothing else, he'd always appreciated her frank honesty, even when it wasn't as kindly delivered as it was now. "Thank you, Commander," he said, and saluted, and she smiled as she returned the salute.

"Dismissed," she replied, then turned away toward her desk and the blinking notifications that had been waiting for their meeting.

Jack left the office, and headed towards his room. Not just a bunk anymore; he'd been given a whole room as befitting his rank of Titan Pilot, and tried not to acknowledge that he'd already made his decision.

Honestly, getting back to the field would be the best thing to keep his mind off of, of everything. Just give him a gun and an objective and he'd get it done, nothing else mattered.

He just had to get through the next week first.

~

Jack spent two days either at the desk in his room, writing as many things as he recalled about his time with BT, or walking the grounds of the Militia Base.

The walks helped to clear his mind, kept him from looking at the same four walls for hours, but people kept _saluting_ him as he walked past, or thanking him, or offering condolences, and it was, well, it was a lot. Those who spoke with him kept their conversations short, and he was grateful. Whether it was because they were simply empathetic or he just radiated the confusion and anger and loss he felt, he couldn't say. The interruptions weren't exactly pleasant, but neither were his thoughts.

Sometimes he wondered if he'd even clear the Psych eval for continued service, and sometimes he wondered if he even wanted to. A nice little place on Harmony didn't sound so bad, if only it didn't seem like it would be so quiet. Like he'd have too much time to dwell on things.

By the time of the Vanguard team interview appointment, he'd stopped flinching when BT's name was mentioned, which, well, was maybe supposed to be a good thing.

There were two people interviewing him; the neural link specialist, Lieutenant Jenkins and the AI psychologist, Lieutenant Alten.

They shook his hands when he entered, and gestured for him to sit in the armchair across from the large desk they shared, data pads spread in front of them.

"Pilot Cooper, thank you for coming," Alten said, smiling at him. She had bright, warm eyes, but her expression seemed forced to him, tight around the mouth.

Jenkins, by contrast, just looked tired and sketched out a lazy salute that Jack returned automatically.

"Of course," he replied, settling in the chair, fishing his own personal data pad from his pocket and set it on the arm of the chair.

"Pilot Cooper, this interview is designed to glean what we can about the Vanguard AI BT-7274 and his development during your partnership. We understand your link was, ah, atypical, and while we've seen the data, we appreciate your cooperation in providing your perspective on the personality and development of the AI and the Neural Link technologies."

Jenkins took a deep breath, like he needed it to animate himself, and sat up a little straighter, data pad at the ready. "Before we get into specifics regarding the Titan’s development, I'm here to discuss the link itself. Pilot status was transferred to you in the field, please describe what happened." His voice was deep, raspy, and he already had his stylus out, ready to take notes on the pad in front of him.

Jack nodded, looked down, and then back up. It felt strange not to look at the person he was talking to, but Jenkins didn't look up at him at all. Jack's gaze dropped back to his hands. "The mission went all wrong from the start - radio chatter as we dropped was all over the place. More defenses than we prepared for and the drop team was set off course. When I woke after the pod dropped and meds were dispensed, others were up and in the thick of it. Stalkers were everywhere. BT and Lastimosa were there - I was injured by IMC Titanfall, and Lastimosa hopped out of BT, gave me an injection and hid me in the foliage where I drifted in and out of consciousness. From there, I saw that the mercenaries Blisk commanded, the Apex Predators, had appeared and one of them attacked BT from behind, disabling him. Another hopped out of his Titan, cut off the ear of one of the men who'd died in the ambush. They, they talked for a bit, and when I came to again, I was about to be prey to one of the native fauna. I fought it off, and BT started moving, but he couldn't stand fully, and Tai, I mean Lastimosa, he fell out of the cockpit, badly injured. He transferred Pilot status to me, and asked me to take care of him, of BT, before he died."

He glanced up again, and Alten was looking at him encouragingly, but with no small amount of pity. Jenkins was frowning.

"BT had no power, so I retrieved some batteries for him - he talked to me through my helmet after the first was installed, but the link wasn't initialized until I retrieved both batteries and entered the cockpit."

"And the link itself, what was that like? Was there pain? Were you incapacitated at all?" asked Jenkins, finally squinting at him.

"No, it wasn't quite pain. It was," he trailed off as he thought about the experience. It would be hard to put into words, really. "It was shocking - surprising, I mean. Full-body tingle, like limbs that fell asleep and then a rush of blood and awareness. it wasn't unpleasant, but it was… it was overwhelming. We were linked and online in what felt like seconds. But we were thrown immediately into combat with stalkers and drones, as some IMC troops had found BT and managed to transmit our position before I took them down."

"What did BT himself feel like when he initiated the link?" Alten asked.

Jack frowned at that. "I'm not sure what you mean."

Alten laughed a bit. "The initialization of the link is different for each Pilot-Titan pair, but I happen to know that BT's first link with Pilot Lastimosa was, overwhelming in a not-good way, since Lastimosa was incapacitated for nearly twenty minutes afterwards. He described BT as 'heavy, everywhere, too much' in that process."

Jack smiled a bit despite himself. "No, it wasn't like that at all. He was thorough, though - it felt like a wave of cold washed over me, followed by heat; a little like going outside to swim in freezing weather, then getting in a sauna," he murmured. He wondered, for the first time, how it felt for BT in that moment. "Like I said, it wasn't bad at all, it was almost invigorating. I'd been recently wounded, but not concussed, and for the first time since waking, I felt ready, energized."

They both looked very interested in that response, stylii scribbling furiously on the surfaces of their pads.

"How did the link feel after initialization? Specifically, in responsiveness to your controls when piloting the Titan," Jenkins asked, squinting up at him at the end of the question.

"Good. Very responsive," Jack replied immediately. "There was some 'lag', for lack of a better term, in the beginning, but by the time we were moving, no further compensation on either of our parts was needed. I think I kept expecting the control to feel 'heavy', but it wasn't, not in the way I thought."

Jenkins nodded in acknowledgement. "In combat, how was communication? Any static or 'stubbornness' on the AIs part to your commands?"

Jack surprised himself by laughing. "Communication was fine. I'm not sure what you mean by stubbornness, though. BT was chattier than I'd have thought, actually, but we could speak fine both in and out of the cockpit, over some distances, though communication was compromised at great distances when we were underground. And he was very eager to acclimate me quickly to his control and functions. Gave me a tutorial on the first loadout while he was still booting up."

Jenkins nodded, but Alten had a new light in her eyes. She was looking at Jack, so when she shifted to take a breath, she missed Jenkins' eye roll.

"You said he was chatty, could you tell us more about that?" she asked, leaning forwards a bit.

"I said he was chattier than I'd expected," he replied and she waved her hand for him to go on, so he shrugged. "I mean, he was willing to engage in non-combat focused conversation. He was, uh, forthcoming with information when asked, told me about his service with Lastimosa when I was still trying to get that second battery.” Another memory surfaced and he smiled slightly and shook his head with a little, sad laugh. “He could tell the IMC agent was lying about their offer of incarceration upon surrender, but not my quip about not leaving him behind. He even, _hell_ , only a little bit after that, he made a joke about being half in love with a gun because I teased him."

Even though the memory was painful, Jack couldn't help but smile. BT really had been something special.

Alten looked very interested in that, and even Jenkins' frown had turned thoughtful as he continued taking notes.

"That's very interesting. Did he joke often?" she asked.

"I mean, I don't know about _often_. There were a couple more times, maybe, but it was, it was less than a day, really. Sometimes he would say something I took as humorous, something he hadn't intended, but I think he was eager to learn about humor, about my vocabulary and colloquialisms. I guess, I guess that wasn't encouraged?"

Alten shook her head. "We don't want to focus on those questions just now. We want your impressions, your perspective, without any influence from what 'should' or 'should not' have been done. This will help us refine our training methods for these AIs."

Jack nodded "Alright," he murmured, jotting the question down on his pad for the end of the interview. "I just wondered since Tai had him for almost 3 years, and he didn't know any of this stuff. Could've just been Tai, though."

Alten nodded. "What other things did you talk about with BT?"

"I, I dunno, a lot of things. I asked him about Tai, about his history and why he preferred certain loadouts over others. A lot of it was about the mercs and our situation, our surroundings. We talked a lot about me, though; he asked a lot of questions about things I said and their meaning. At first, it wasn't as much, he was pretty focused on the mission, but by the time we'd been reunited with the Commander, it was, I don't know, it was comfortable."

There was some quiet as the pair took notes.

"At that time, BT requested that you remain his Pilot," Alten said. "Do you know why?"

Jack took a deep breath, because this was something he'd thought about a lot. "No, I don't," he said. "At that time, he'd said our combat effectiveness rating was high, and that seemed to be good enough for the commander. That moment was," he started, then took a moment to breathe again. "I felt something from him. Like... I can't describe it well, a lot of our link felt one-way, but in that moment, I felt something that I don't think BT himself understood. Like, he was worried. Not quite upset, but not far off."

Jenkins cleared his throat. "You said the neural link felt one-way for 'a lot of it', but does this mean that at some point it didn't?"

Jack glanced up at the man, but Jenkins still kept his eyes on his datapad. "Sure, a couple of times," he said. "It's hard to describe."

"Please try," Jenkins said, glancing up at Jack with an expectant look, and Jack had to work not to make a face at the man.

"Well, I got these glimpses a little bit more as we worked together. For a lot of it, I felt like... like he was inside my head, but I wasn't ever inside his, you know? But occasionally, I'd get impressions from him, like faint echoes of emotions. And at the... at the end, when he..." Jack had to stop and swallow. "I... I can't even describe it. What I, he... what happened. It was intense. But I know part of it was him, that he was the one feeling the things I felt from him, and for just a moment before he threw me, it was like the link was no longer one-way. For just a moment, I was in his mind, and it was...," he trailed off, and shrugged. "Intense. That's the best way I could describe it."

When he glanced up, Alten was looking at him speculatively, and Jenkins was frowning at his datapad.

"And when his chassis was destroyed," Jenkins said, voice even like he wasn't describing the moment Jack had constantly relived every time he closed his eyes for the nights since Typhon, "Was there pain when the link severed?"

Jack frowned. "The link... no, there was no pain. Not physical pain, anyway, but I don't think it was actually severed," he said. "Ensign Hughes said the link was still technically active, and would have to be manually scrubbed before I could link to another Titan."

Jenkins finally looked interested at that, sitting up a bit more and peering at Jack like he might be able to somehow see the status of his neural link through his skull. "Interesting," he muttered, low enough Jack didn't think he realized he'd said it aloud. He continued to mutter as he furiously scribbled notes onto his datapad, but Jack couldn't interpret individual words enough to understand what he was saying.

Alten rolled her eyes, and shook her head. "There's supposed to be a failsafe that... well, automatically severs the neural link in case of Titan destruction," she explained. 

Jack frowned. "Why?"

"Well, this is a new field of Titan technology. Sometimes there can be a painful feedback when a Titan is destroyed while linked to a Pilot - you do know they are linked directly into your brain, right? Well, that's taken pretty seriously. The Vanguard AIs are much more advanced, with a deeper connection to your neural and physiological systems than other Titans - they do come with a lot of risks, and we put in safeguards to ensure they couldn't just scramble your brains unintentionally."

Something about that made Jack relax a bit, and he gave a rueful smile. But he was feeling exhausted just from this interview and didn't feel like offering any reassurances. She smiled back, though, and he was grateful that she didn't seem to need any.

Jenkins glanced up quickly, like he'd just remembered they were there. "Oh, one more thing. Does the link bother you at all now? Are you receiving any feedback from it?"

Jack shook his head. "No. It doesn't bother me," he said. "Occasionally, I think I'll feel something, like a sort of pressure or a tingle, but... honestly, I'm not sure that's that not just me," he admitted. He missed BT, but he wasn't going to give that to this dour man who even now had his eyes glued back to his datapad, jotting down more notes.

"Well, that'll be good enough for now, at least," the man said, setting his stylus down. "Please schedule an appointment with the appropriate labs for investigation into the sensations you've been feeling as soon as you can."

Alten sighed, but kept her calm smile. "Thank you for your cooperation, Pilot Cooper. We'll schedule another interview at a later date once things have settled down for you. I'm very sorry for your loss."

Jack nodded, but broke eye contact. He hated the sympathy he saw there. "Thanks," he murmured.

The meeting wrapped up with no formality - Jenkins managed another half-assed salute before he left, and Alten shook his hand, and then he was suddenly in his quarters without even remembering the long walk back.

He felt drained, wrung out, and didn’t even remember what it was he had for dinner before going straight to sleep afterward.

~

Jack had been dreading the Psych evaluation. He didn't know a single soldier who was ever eager to talk to the psychologists, but Jack expected some long, drawn out exploration of his experiences, being forced to share the details of his loss, and weigh the validity of his grief.

He'd dreamed about BT almost every single night since his return, and every morning he felt that loss all over again. He didn't always remember the details, but he did remember the feeling of BT with him, that last moment of connection, and carried that into the waking world for only a few brief moments. It was getting easier to get out of bed, though, a little more each day, and he wasn't sure how he felt about that. He supposed having a goal helped - he wanted to get back to work, get back to fighting the IMC again. If his reasons were far more personal now, well, he'd joined the ranks of thousands who'd lost something or someone in this war.

The only night he hadn't had the dreams was night the techs had his helmet; he'd mentioned static, flickers and erratic display behavior. They'd examined it, and apparently the helmet was fried. Not worth salvaging, they'd returned it to Jack and confirmed it was no longer fit for combat - his jump kit was calibrated to him and could link to a new helmet without issues, one incapable of facilitating any neural links. The commander had already told him they had one ready and waiting for him, if he decided to return to service, of course. 

He expected the evaluation would immediately involve having to talk around the dreams and the feelings they gave him. He expected having to maybe prove his feelings for BT were valid, that he might even have to prove BT wasn't 'just' a machine, 'just' an AI; that he'd been a friend.

It was none of those things, at least not at first. The psychologist, a Dr. Maduin, had instead asked first about Jack's future plans. Would he retire or take the offered position? Would he instead request a demotion back to rifleman and return to his former regiment?

Jack was mostly honest, that he was leaning towards the offer Commander Briggs had extended towards him, that he'd rather be busy, and that he may take some measure of joy in further harming the IMC as revenge for his loss.

The doctor had nodded, and made some notes, and after that came the questions he'd been expecting about BT, about how he felt, and those he was a little less forthcoming about, but the doctor didn't press, and at the end of the evaluation, he nodded.

"Well, I'm not going to keep you waiting for word from your Commander. While you haven't officially accepted her offer yet, I'm declaring you fit for whatever duty you choose to accept. I appreciate your cooperation, Pilot Cooper," he said, and that made him pause for a moment.

PIlot. With no Titan, anymore. If he accepted the commander's offer, he'd keep the title, the rank. The responsibilities too, she’d said.

He smiled at the doctor after a moment. "Thank you for your consideration, doctor."

Dr. Maduin smiled at him one more time, and Jack left the office feeling a little lighter than he'd entered. He'd expected a rigorous experience, a battle to prove he was ready for combat again. But instead, he was thoughtful, not wrung-out.

He knew no further consideration of the commander's offer was necessary; he was going to take it. He was ready to get back out there, and even without BT, he knew he could still get in, get things done, and get out again.

He'd done plenty of that on his own, with BT hovering in the background, always in his ear, a presence he felt in his mind. He'd just have to do without that anymore. He knew the kind of work the commander was offering, and any single mission of that type might even take longer than his entire 'mission' with BT had. His first operation without BT could be longer than his entire partnership had been. And yet, he knew that the first one would be the hardest. He'd only linked with BT for the better part of a single day, and marveled at how difficult going forward was, when he'd already been without BT longer than he'd even known him at all.

But, he was ready, he knew that. The only cure for grief was time, but a good remedy was distraction, and nothing gave him focus like a good mission. He knew the commander wouldn't accept any decision today, so he set a reminder to contact her the next day, to prove he'd had time to think about it and had considered accordingly.

But he already knew his answer, and he knew she did, too. It was just a matter of time.


	2. Chapter 2

Jack's first mission after BT wasn't what he’d expected. Perhaps it was a test of his capabilities, his ability to think on the fly, and still get results that favored the Militia.

It looked like an easy op, which was the problem - the drop was far, and the walk was quiet, but it gave him plenty of time to test out his new gear, to learn the functions of the new helmet properly and put his jump kit through its paces. BT wasn't around to provide terrain analysis, but he'd rarely used that feature - BT learned quickly only to offer it if Jack had really been lingering.

BT had learned a lot quickly, hadn't he?

Jack just let the thought happen, let it cross his mind and then let it leave just as quickly. It still hurt, of course it did, but that was fine, he was fine, and in any case, he'd learned how to analyze terrain as well. He learned that from BT originally, so every time he crossed a gap or devised an alternate route instead of a firefight, it was a tribute of sorts, wasn't it?

He wondered if it would always be like this, weighing himself against the person he'd been for a single day.

Probably not, or at least, not for long. Statistically, the kinds of jobs he expected he'd be taking on were the kind that dramatically shortened the life expectancy of anyone in the role. But he wasn't trying to go out or anything like that; he was just trying to take out as much of the IMC's resources as possible, and it would be beyond idiotic not to acknowledge that he was taking on an enormous amount of risk, and the statistically likely outcome.

His current target was a Titan development facility. Not only had the IMC taken over one of the Militia's development labs, they were currently trying to replicate Vanguards of their own through research. Perhaps he'd selected this from the initial missions he'd been offered for personal reasons, but the commander had smiled grimly at him when he'd made his choice, like she wanted to keep something as special as the Vanguards out of the IMC's slimy hands, too.

He'd avoided a few patrols on his way in - security wasn't exactly light, but since the facility's importance was definitely downplayed, too much security would have drawn Militia attention sooner since they'd believed the facility had been destroyed by the IMC rather than taken over. His new helmet had a few of the functions BT would have provided, but Jack had to manually employ them, which, well, it certainly made him appreciate BT in a new way; the Titan had anticipated his needs before Jack even knew he had them.

He scanned the building from the outside, found an empty room with a console that appeared to be important enough, and made his way in. He loved infiltration, because even with all the security procedures and policies in place, humans are just going to be lazy sometimes, and are going to want a fresh breeze even if protocol says windows should be locked at all times, especially if you're leaving the room.

Well, they certainly wouldn't live to learn from the lesson, he supposed. While this facility would be useful if it were back in Militia control, he'd been given the explicit order to destroy it instead, since it was one of the only factories of its kind that the IMC controlled, and the Militia forces were ably defending the remaining factories which were currently producing as fast as they could. Given current supply routes and this facility's current location, it wasn't worth defending - it would be far more valuable in its destruction since protection would be too costly at this time and for a long time to come, even if the IMC left the Frontier entirely.

The IMC still had manufacturing facilities on ships throughout the Frontier, but nothing that would help them investigate the Militia-made Vanguard Titans on this scale.

The other goal of this mission was to ensure they had no actual Vanguard data cores in their possession, but in order to investigate, he had to get into their systems first. Thus, the empty room with a console he could hack with his data knife.

It took time, of course, and he kept an eye and ear out for any personnel nearby - he knew there were scientists in other rooms, and it felt strange to be standing here with living IMC personnel potentially as close as just outside the room, but the alternative was a firefight he wasn't likely to survive, and an alerted facility that might move or destroy their data, both of which would be bad. Luckily, this particular console was both out of view of the door's window, and facing the door itself, so Jack would have the tiniest heads up if someone entered the room.

The data knife had finished its work; it had given him access to search the system for blueprints and projects, so he settled the keyboard back into place and started looking. He had his helmet record the facility blueprints and started skimming over current projects at the facility when he heard the soft beep of the digital lock on the door. He was grateful this facility had been Militia-made originally, because his familiarity gave him a heads up with enough time to quickly set the monitor to sleep and duck into the desk alcove itself just before someone - no, two someones - entered the room.

"See, Jones? Window's open, just like you said it wasn't."

"Stars, Timbal, if they didn't restrict environmental controls so this damned building wasn't hotter than a furnace, maybe we wouldn't have to open the windows for a hint of a breeze."

There was a gusty sigh, presumably from Timbal, and he tracked the pair of footsteps - one booted and heavy, the other quieter, but sharp on the cement floor - towards the window. He pulled himself as tight as he could - from the window, they'd see him if anything stuck out. In fact, even if nothing stuck out, they still might see him if they turned at just the wrong angle.

"You do realize that we work in the same facility, right? And I'm carrying 70 pounds of armor and gear that I don't see you hauling."

"Bitch, bitch, bitch," Jones mocked back as he slid the window shut and the lock engaged. Jack was grateful for his helmet - his body was sweating, but the helmet included systems that kept his face cool and free of sweat, at least in most circumstances.

"You're lucky it was me and not Starling on your ass about this - I wasn't gonna write you up, but if you're gonna be like that..." Timbal replied, and Jones laughed.

"Please," he replied, "if I get written up again, you'll have to butter up some other lab coat to work on the upper floors."

Jack tracked their exit from the room by their footsteps, and let out a sigh of relief when he heard the door shut and the lock beep again when they finally left.

He gave a quick peek just to be sure they'd really left before he slid out of his hiding spot and woke up the console to continue his search.

_Bingo._

There were two main projects dealing with the Vanguards - the hardware and the software, and both were on-site. Which, honestly, seemed like a mistake, but one he was more than happy to use to teach the IMC a very expensive lesson.

The IMC had salvaged dozens of Vanguard chassis and had hauled some of them here for study - and of course ending any progress in those investigations was a huge priority, but he found out there were also at least three Vanguard Data Cores onsite that were retrieved 'intact'. He just couldn't find confirmation of whether the AIs were intact or if it was just the hardware that housed them, and didn't know enough to know how valuable the Core hardware could be even without the AI inside it.

Of the two objectives, though, that had to be the bigger priority. He may not know enough to know how the AIs worked, but he'd certainly learned how necessary they were for the Vanguard chassis to function with the full versatility and power their design offered. Of the two avenues the IMC were investigating, these were far more important - while the adaptive capabilities of the Vanguard chassis were enormously valuable, the AIs had even more potential for growth and advantage down the line. If he could only keep one out of the hands of the IMC, it had to be the Cores.

He marked the location of the labs dedicated to each project on the map he'd stored in his helmet, and sighed, because of course the two locations were on almost opposite ends of the facility, and hitting one would likely put the facility on alert.

He took a few moments to plan his next moves. He'd brought explosives, of course, in preparation for demolishing the facility. He had enough on him to destroy this main building as well as the labs, and studying the map indicated he could place two in the Vanguard chassis storage/study room itself and should be able to destroy the Titan chassis as well as bring that wing of the building down on them. If he placed the charges first, both in the chassis wing and the software labs, _undetected_ , he could then infiltrate the AI storage and study wing, steal the cores, exit, and bring the whole building down.

Easy, he'd thought earlier, and laughed softly to himself. Still, he had a plan forming in his head - it may not be as easy as he first thought, but his only options were to succeed, or die trying, and he had no intentions of dying today.

~

The thing about humans was that they almost never looked _up_. The facility was huge, with large hallways designed for moving whatever might possibly be needed through them. Titan parts were huge, so the halls were huge. With large vents and pipes kept close to the ceiling, Jack had plenty of room to avoid most active patrols, and a cloak for use if he needed. His jump kit was nearly silent, so as long as he only ran along the upper walls when security or personnel were far enough away, they wouldn't even hear his footfalls. He did have a few close calls where he had to hang from a pipe, cloaked, or crouch in the shadows of a vent and hope for the best because the cloak had run out, heart racing.

It was exactly what he needed, what he’d wanted when he agreed to this role. Jack didn't care to look at the timekeeper the helmet could display if required, so he didn't know how long it took him, but it certainly felt like a long time to round the whole facility and place the charges discreetly in the required places.

Then, he just had to figure out how to steal the three Vanguard AI cores they had here. Making his way to the lab was a little tougher - the hallways were more populated, and there were less of the convenient large pipes running through this part of the facility. It meant progress was slower, but by the time he was in the correct area, it was still daylight and the labs were quite populated. Humans generally still preferred to sleep at night even if their job was entirely indoors; the shift roster he'd downloaded indicated only security worked at night and the labs should be unpopulated.

He needed to conserve his energy, so he tucked himself into a shadowed corner of a supply closet to wait. It was dangerous to doze off, but his body was too keyed up to sleep and he was able to stay alert enough to keep his thoughts from drifting too far.

His helmet let him know when it was two hours past the scheduled end of shift for the lab folks, and he uncurled slowly before stretching quickly. His helmet sensors didn't pick up anyone in the hall outside, but he still spent a moment to re-check the maps his helmet had copied from the displays earlier, to ensure he was in the right place and where he had to go. If they were smart at all, alarms would sound when he had to force his way into the lab; if they were a little dumber, then the alarms would sound upon liberating the first core. And if they were dumber than that, well, most would die in their sleep, he supposed, a better fate than some.

The hallway was empty when he darted out of the closet, but he had no idea what their routes or routines were, so he made his way to the lab entrance as quickly as he could. As he thought, they were electronically locked, but his data knife worked quickly. He tensed when he slid the blade into the delicate electronics, but no alarm sounded. He supposed this meant the Militia must not have alarmed these pads in the first place, and the IMC hadn't bothered to upgrade them - a security oversight he'd mention to the commander, if he made it back.

His data knife worked quickly, and he slid into the lab and froze just inside the doors. The lab was sprawling, but it wasn't empty as he'd hoped. There were three engineers sitting at their stations, staring at screens and typing on their monitors, two facing away from him and one partially angled his way. His entrance hadn't made much noise, however, and none of them looked up. He darted forward and crouched behind one of the empty stations close to the door, heart pounding again. He plotted out a quick path around the room, figured he could take them down silently from behind, and tuck the bodies into their desks to give him more time.

He didn't linger; the chances of discovery rose every moment, so he moved, crouched and silent, from station to station until he was behind the man who'd been partially facing the door. A quick peek up showed that while he was in the line of sight for the two other men in the lobby, neither glanced up from their monitors. One looked half asleep, actually.

Jack moved, stood long enough to place one hand firmly over the engineer's mouth and used the other to drive his dataknife into the man's neck. Then he lowered the man gently as he could to the ground, hand still over his mouth as he struggled to breathe or cry out, but in only a few moments, the man was still.

Jack let out the breath he was holding and quietly shoved the corpse into the desk's footwell, just in case. The second man went down as easy, but struggled enough that his chair made a sound and alerted the third scientist, who glanced up and gasped when he saw Jack.

The man stared, but Jack knew he didn't have the luxury of time. The engineer stood and tried to run, a shout stuttering out of his mouth, but Jack was on him before he'd managed a full word. He had no idea if any guards had heard but at this point, he had no time for anything but grabbing the cores. They were individually housed at the stations the men had been working at, each under a dome of shatterproof glass. Jack slammed his dataknife into the first console, and while he wasn't exactly _grateful_ the alarm went off at this point, he'd been prepared for it, at least. It took a handful of seconds for the knife to work and the glass dome retracted just as the first security guard entered the room.

Now that silence was no longer an option, it didn't matter if Jack used his guns. That first guard went down with a single bullet to the head, since he hadn't been looking in the right direction to see Jack in the first place. But there were more, of course, and more entrances to the large shared lab than the one Jack himself had used. Jack kept firing as he used one hand to wrest the core from the console and shoved it into one of his pockets. Then he darted to the next station, and once his knife was in the console, he had two hands free, and swapped to the auto rifle so he could take out as many of the security guards he could see, and keep others afraid to enter.

But it took precious seconds to grab the core, stow it, and retrieve his knife, all of which meant poor blind firing with the rifle with his other hand. Then he had to reload, of course, and it was on to the last one.

There was a voice on loudspeaker, he realized, but he couldn't make out the words over the alarms and the gunfire. It didn't matter, anyway. Knife in the console, he took potshots at the guards who leaned in to try and fire at him - they'd stopped rushing into the room at this point. After all, there were only so many exits, and they probably had loads of men on all of them, now - even with the likelihood of lighter shifts this late in the evening, he knew how quickly a man could be up and fully geared and shooting from a dead sleep.

He hadn't bothered to make a plan for that; there was no way any plan he made would be feasible with that much chaos, so once the third core was stowed in another pocket, he reloaded again, updated his map with the fastest route out of the facility, and then he _moved._

It was always harder to sort memories from battles like this after the fact. It was close quarters, blood and grunts, grenades and gunfire. Scent didn't make its way into the helmet, at least not outside scents. Instead, he had the tang of sweat in his mouth, the dry scent of the recycled, cool air that the helmet fanned across the parts of his face that weren't in direct contact with padding. He knew he'd been tagged a few times, could feel at least one wound in his left arm, but he had no time to address that. When he could, he ran on the walls for the speed boost it offered, and spared a second for the memory of Tai and the simulator he'd let Jack run, where Jack's first time brought him into the top ten, and his second into the top five.

Then he was out, broke through one of the windows of the facility and ran for the cover of the nearby jungle immediately, grateful his jump kit prevented fall damage, because the three-story fall would definitely have broken something otherwise.

He couldn’t go too far before destroying the facility - every second meant more data that could be transferred to remote servers, if they hadn’t already done so. He waited for the bare minimum distance instead before he turned back to the facility and freed the detonator from its secured container. There was no hesitation as he pushed the button that would explode and destroy the facility he’d just left, killing dozens of people, staff and security alike.

The thought didn't bother him; the IMC had wanted to destroy a whole planet, millions or billions of lives be damned, and while these people may not have known or supported that plan, they still knew that their work here would end hundreds of Militia and Frontier lives if they succeeded, in addition to resumed IMC control of the frontier they abandoned decades ago.

Jack wasn't about to let that happen; he was born free from the control of greedy corporations, and there wasn't anything he wouldn't do to keep it that way.

~

Commander Briggs was very pleased with his results.

"I knew we made the right decision in offering this role to you," she said with a wry grin, and the slight grin he gave her back even felt genuine.

It was better than he thought he'd feel for a long, long time, and while part of it was for a job well done, the other part, well...

He'd rescued three Vanguard Titan cores, their AIs intact. He couldn't bring back BT, nothing would, but he'd dealt a blow to the IMC's attempts to copy the technology. It was only partially about the advantage the Vanguard AIs gave them; part of it was that he couldn't leave them behind, not if there was a chance of rescue.

Because to him, it had been a rescue, not just a recovery. Like rescuing soldiers, brothers-in-arms; these Titans weren't just machines, they were basically people. They could think and feel, he knew it, and once he knew they were there, leaving them behind wasn't an option. Two of them, he'd learned, had lost their Pilots in the same skirmish that had seen their cores stolen in what appeared to be surgically planned raids to steal the cores in the first place. The third Pilot had survived, but had been wounded too badly to resume his former role, and had assumed his titan had been destroyed.

The commander asked if he wanted to receive updates on them once they'd been debriefed and Jack declined; he was happy to have saved them, would do it again in a heartbeat, but their fate was to go on and link with other Pilots and fight the IMC on the battlefield. And that life, the life he'd wanted so badly before, was now something he couldn't bear to think about. He wished them well, but he didn't even bother to learn their names before asking for another mission.

The commander laughed and said he had debrief and another eval before he'd be cleared for these missions full-time, and Jack didn't argue with her. He knew he was ready for it, more than ready, and knew it more now than he had when he first accepted the role Commander Briggs had offered.

He couldn't bring the IMC down singlehandedly, of course, but that didn't mean he wouldn't do his damnedest to _try._

~

The best thing about these missions, Jack mused, was that he never really knew what he'd end up doing.

Sometimes it was infiltration, sometimes field support or rescue. Even without a Titan, he'd only grown more confident of his place on the battlefield; his skills now far outpaced what he'd been capable of as a mere rifleman.

He wasn't sure how, but the way he saw it, this had to be due to BT somehow. In their short time together, he'd done more than he ever thought he could, and now...

Well, now he was putting those skills to use. It'd be dishonoring BT's memory to do anything else, wouldn't it?

His rank as Pilot gave him certain authority in the field, and he realized that was why the commander hadn't stripped him of it - everyone knew he was Pilot Cooper, and the respect and authority that role gave him meant he'd been able to make decisions and save people, whether he'd been actively sent to save them or had just wandered into their fight somehow (with pockets of fighting all over the Frontier, this happened often).

It gave him a rush, it made him feel _alive_ and _good_ , and he never wanted to stop. Of course, occasionally he'd fail; he was only human, and he rarely escaped entirely unscathed. It was the missions where others were lost that he took the hardest. He had regular evaluations that required him to return to HQ periodically, and since he basically reported directly to Commander Briggs, he got to know her a lot better than he ever thought he would.

She was really something. Her passion to defend the frontier from the IMC may have been greater than his own.

After his first few missions, he mostly ended up with a handler who would be his contact if the commander was busy - which she often was.

And for all that he never knew where he was going next, he never knew exactly what he'd be doing or how the sketchy plans he'd make would go awry, things still kind of felt like a routine - which was the most dangerous mindset to be in. After all, the bulk of his job was taking advantage of the plain, human laziness that resulted from a comfortable routine.

For him, the fight for the Frontier's freedom became less about territories and ships or the advancing and ceding of power in contested, strategic locations, but more about single targets, about the enemy in front of him that he could see, the facility he could take down or the troops he could bring home.

He knew he'd been making trouble for the IMC - that was basically his job description, after all - but he hadn't once thought about what this might actually mean down the line. After all, what he wanted was the IMC out of the Frontier; he just never thought of what they might want to take with them when they go.

It turned out, the IMC authorities in the frontier wanted a high-profile 'hero', someone who'd directly or indirectly caused a lot of damage to IMC property and reduced their manufacturing capabilities, their manpower. One they could take home and parade around as the symbol of their defeat, to rally ire and support for another big push to take back the frontier.

There were quite a few individuals that fit their needs; the IMC bounty list was well-known, after all, updated regularly - the most recent update was pushed out quietly and changed the requirement for rewards so that all bounties must be turned in alive. But most of the names on that list were behind the strongest Militia protections; some in retirement, most still in command.

There was, however, only one of those big names that worked alone, who frequently wormed his way both into and out of the IMC's grasp on a frequent basis. One person who could be directly blamed for the huge losses incurred at Typhon, who had made a mockery of General Marder and the mercenaries he'd hired, and who continued to cost the IMC in terms of supply lines, infrastructure and manpower.

In the broad sense, anyone on the IMC bounty list would work just fine for their purposes. But the IMC clearly held one name far above the others; specifically, they wanted one Pilot Jack Cooper.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated some tags after getting caught up on the story. It does go to some dark places in a few chapters, so I wanted to warn for that.

Commander Sarah Briggs wasn't in her office often - she much preferred to be out there in the thick of it, but unfortunately, command responsibilities meant more than just being on the field with her men. It also meant paperwork, and reports, so she did at least have to occasionally make an appearance at her desk to get these things done.

This was her least favorite part of command; she was proud of the work she did, accepted responsibility for the losses her troops took, but while these reports had to be made, and orders sent down the chain, she didn't like the time it took to write all these things down herself - but she'd never let it be said that she neglected any part of her duties.

The Frontier Militia had earned many victories against the IMC in recent months, which meant she was busier than ever - and part of that, she knew, was the ace in their sleeve, one Pilot Jack Cooper. Even without a Titan, he'd proven to be extremely effective when utilized correctly - not just the big infiltrations or rescues, either; sending him on patrol often saw him taking part in some fight or another, and turning tides she didn't even have her eyes on.

Even though he now reported to a handler that in turn reported directly to her, she kept a close eye on him. Not only because he was a valued asset, but because she felt a kinship with him; as one of the few to pilot a Vanguard Titan, though he was the only one so far to lose that Titan - and not just any Vanguard, but the first one that had been built and sent into service.

She couldn't imagine what would happen if she lost MOB, and she'd been with him for years. Jack had worked with BT for less than a single day, and yet, the changes in the man had been undeniable.

But more interesting to her and the brains behind the Vanguards, so had the changes in BT. He'd requested - _requested!_ \- to keep Cooper. He'd used slang and apparently, he made jokes. He sounded more human than any of the Vanguards, and he'd been with Jack Cooper for less than a day.

Every Vanguard pilot had received extensive training in how to handle their AI, but Cooper had never had that training. They’d learned the behaviors to look out for, to report, to encourage - so far, they'd been 'strongly discouraged’ from engaging with them in certain ways, to teach them in the ways that Cooper clearly had. 

And Cooper had clearly felt strongly about BT as well. No one had said anything, but even though his face was dry by the time his helmet came off as they departed Typhon, the evidence of his tears remained from just after BT sacrificed himself.

They had somehow become more than just partners; they'd become friends in a way that went beyond what the Militia's techs believed to be the Vanguards’ current capabilities of understanding the concept.

So maybe Cooper was a pet project of sorts - she knew that men like him needed action, needed to be useful, and so she gave him those things. And in return, he gave them results.

She checked the secure channel she used to communicate with Cooper's handler, Corporal Strauss, or occasionally with Cooper himself; no news, no updates, just like every time she’d checked in the last day. Cooper had been out of contact for more than 98 hours at this point, far outside the 56 hour timetable given for most of his missions. And that 56 hour time limit itself was not an expectation that was based on his past performance; using his past performances, Sarah expected to have heard back from him in maybe 40 hours, given that he was mostly sent to clear out a temporary base they'd just discovered. His performance in missions like that far exceeded his usual excellent parameters, so the extended silence was more than a little concerning.

But, his missions carried serious risks, she knew - and he knew - that his fate would most likely be a death on the battlefield. He was good, damn good, but no one was invincible.

She had reports to write, though, and set back to work with an aggrieved sigh. However, not two hours later, Corporal Strauss, rushed into her room without knocking. "Sir, it's been reported that Pilot Cooper has been captured by the IMC," he reported, slightly out of breath.

"What? When and by who?"

"Just now. Our sats had reported the base was deserted and some of the buildings appeared to have been collapsed in the most recent images so we believe Cooper was there, but we have had no contact with Pilot Cooper in the expected timeframe. The information of his capture was sent by one of our agents inside the IMC - apparently it's been spreading like wildfire through their ranks. They're not trying very hard to keep it quiet."

Sarah sat back in her chair for a moment. "Shit." Strauss said nothing, waiting for orders. She'd known something was wrong, but this might mean something worse than she'd conceived of - someone in the Militia had suppressed information, or had prevented it from getting into her hands until it was too late.

But every second she sat there thinking about the ifs and maybes was a second wasted that could be used to get Cooper back.

"I want a list of names: everyone who's so much as slapped eyes on this mission or any of its components, anyone _bunking_ with someone who had eyes on the mission, I want everyone," she said. It wouldn't be nearly all of what she really needed, but it was at least something that could get started immediately. Strauss saluted, snapped out a quick 'Sir!' and rushed out of the room.

She knew the possibilities that such a capture represented, and none were good. She knew that the IMC had a bounty on his head, just like they had one on hers. They were both among the highest bounties offered, at fifty thousand credits each, dead or alive.

She frowned at that, because while it was a hefty sum, it wasn't enough to attract the kind of talent that would be needed to take Cooper down. Following her gut,she decided to check the 'net for the IMC's posted bounty list, and her breath left her in a loud whoosh when she saw the amount next to Cooper's name. He was at the _top_ , and they'd offered a whopping half a million credits for his capture. They wanted him _alive_ , and that meant they had plans for him - the possibilities would set her blood to ice if she let herself dwell on them, so she set that thought aside for now. Her name was still on the list, in the middle where it had been for some time, though she did see that her bounty had at least been increased to seventy five thousand credits since she'd last checked.

Stars! _Alive?_

That at least gave her some hope - not that she could rescue him herself, of course, because even if she wanted to, that would never get approved. She might get approval for a small operation, but she likely wouldn't get approval to lead it herself. Not that that would stop her from asking, of course.

Still, she checked to see who was on the ship at the moment, who was rested, who was not. She ordered information on all known IMC ships and camps in the area Cooper had been sent to, and the names of any ships that had left that space in the last 100 hours.

If Cooper was alive, she'd do her damnedest to bring him home.

~

In less than twelve hours, Sarah had two lists of names - those who had any sort of access to the information on Cooper's mission (and those connected to them in any capacity), and those who were eligible for a rescue attempt - and a list of IMC activity in the area.

The only thing she was missing was a _plan_. There was too much activity to sort through; she needed a way to narrow the search - if only she'd had some sort of tracker on him or his equipment!

As soon as the thought occurred to her, she jolted up out of her chair. _A tracker!_ Well, they didn't have _that_ , but they had something else that might work.

She called for one of the techs that worked on the neural links between Titans and their pilots to report to her office _immediately_. Then she called in an aide to enter Cooper's quarters and retrieve the helmet he'd used when he'd been linked to BT.

He may not have a tracker, but he had refused to scrub his neural link, and maybe, maybe, it would be possible to track him using that instead. But they'd have to use the helmet, since BT himself was no longer an option.

The tech reported in first, a senior engineer by the name of Griffen Haroldson, a thickset man with sharp eyes.

"Haroldson, I'll need your expertise for a rescue mission," She said, and the tech raised a brow.

"With all due respect, Commander, I'm not a pilot or a soldier," he said, and she laughed.

"Of course not. No, I mean, I need to know if we could use a neural link between a helmet and a pilot to locate them."

Haroldson frowned in response. "The Titan should be able to find its pilot," he said, then narrowed his eyes as he searched her face. "Pilot Cooper," he stated. Sarah tried not to frown at him; the man would have to be especially sharp to come to that correct conclusion so quickly with the limited information he had. However, his name wasn't on the list of those who knew about any of Cooper's missions at all, nor did he have any relation to anyone who did. But the facts did line up; Cooper was famous enough for outliving his Titan through not one, but two chassis; he was the only pilot to do so, and he was the only pilot who had a Titan that was no longer present.

The tech glanced at the floor in thought, then his lips twisted in an unhappy expression. "In theory, maybe. The link would still be _technically_ active, in a sense, but while the helmet facilitates the original link and can act as a backup in case of implant failure, it's not designed to carry that load on its own. In this case, the fact that Pilot Cooper only received the field chip that had been installed by that helmet and not the full neural implant gives us a better chance that this could work."

She nodded. "Good. You're correct - Pilot Cooper has been captured by the IMC, and we have reason to believe they want to keep him alive. Great for rescue plans, not great for whatever fate they have in mind for our Pilot."

Haroldson's face went hard at that. "I'll _make_ it work, sir. Cooper's a hero; we can't leave him in their grasp."

She nodded at him, and the arrival of her aide with the helmet forestalled her response.

Ensign James, a young recruit, carried the helmet securely in his arms, but he was frowning down at it in confusion as he came in.

"Sir," he began, but she held up a hand, because it was easy to see why the kid was distressed - the visor light of the helmet blinked in rapid succession, then paused, then blinked some more.

Haroldson, however, looked intrigued, and reached for the helmet. James looked at her and she nodded, and the boy released the helmet into the tech's care.

Haroldson held the helmet up at eye height, glancing inside briefly before spending a few moments watching the pattern. "This is obviously unusual. I think this is some sort of communication," he offered, voice slow and unsure.

"Communication?"

"Yes, it might be binary, or perhaps Morse code," He said. "I don't know how Cooper could possibly do this, though. I'll need to plug this in and see if it can be decoded somehow."

"Does it pose a danger to our systems?" She asked. "If it's not Cooper?"

Haroldson looked at her with his brows raised, and when his face settled, he almost appeared approving. "That's a good question. I was going to connect it to a closed system just in case. No danger to our systems, and standard procedure for investigations of this nature."

"I'm coming with you," she said, and the man shrugged and turned to leave. She turned to her aide. "James, stay here, if anyone needs me, you contact me directly but do not tell anyone where I am. Understood?"

"Understood, sir!" the ensign chirped, with a salute.

Haroldson led her to one of the labs, and she followed him to a console that was set apart from the rest. "We have a need for closed systems often, especially when dealing with the AIs as they develop," he explained. He'd set the helmet down on the console, and spent a few moments at the keyboard, checking some settings before opening a small compartment and spooling out some cables that he set about attaching to the helmet's ports.

She peered at the display, which had a few windows pop up as tests were run, but this sort of thing wasn't her specialty. Haroldson made thoughtful noises, though, and nodded at one point. "Binary," he muttered, then started typing on the keyboard.

After a moment, a new window popped up, and this time, Sarah understood it perfectly.

[Jack? Pilot, I did the math; my core escaped the explosion of the Ark and should be undamaged. I should be awaiting pickup at these coordinates on the planet Typhon: 18 14.781, 26 -35.174]

Haroldson glanced toward her; she saw it out of the corner of her eye, but she couldn't pull her eyes away from the screen.

[Pilot Jack Cooper, this is Vanguard-class Titan BT-7274. My core should have survived the destruction of the fold weapon. Requesting recovery.]

She took a deep breath, then another, and finally tore her eyes from the screen to look at Haroldson.

"Can we establish communication? Can we verify his identity?"

Haroldson nodded, but he was frowning as well. "I believe so, and yes. Every Vanguard AI has identifiers that are programmed in. I'm not sure how he's doing this, but... " he trailed off as he typed, then frowned, then nodded. "As far as we can be certain, yeah, it's him."

She glanced around and pulled a nearby chair towards the console and collapsed into it. "Shit. Can we use the helmet to locate Cooper?"

The tech shook his head. "No. From what I can see, the helmet's code has been almost completely overwritten, and its functions fried. It looks like BT had stored some of his code in the helmet itself at the expense of everything else - that's how I was able to verify his identity so quickly. But, the Titan code is vast, for lack of a better term, and even though it's not nearly all of what is actually _his_ code, what he did put in here overwrote most of the existing code in the helmet. BT has," he said, then waved his hands in the air, as if he could wring an understandable explanation from the air, "he's done something unprecedented, and I'm not sure it worked. I'm not even sure what he was trying to do. There’s no way this is _all_ of him; the helmet simply couldn’t contain that amount of data. I’m not entirely sure what it is just yet, but it's definitely his code. I'm not sure we can actually communicate with what we're seeing here; the messages are repeating, almost automatic. However, BT's core would contain the active neural link to Pilot Cooper if he did indeed survive the destruction of the Ark. If we recover the core and recompile all of his data, we should be able to locate Cooper with BT's active link."

Sarah nodded, then took a deep breath. "Well, let's see if we can talk to him," she said, gesturing to the keyboard. "If we can communicate, maybe we can learn more."

Haroldson nodded, and spent a few minutes typing at the keyboard before he gave a triumphant nod. "There," he said, "what you type will appear in white, if he can truly respond, his responses will be in green.

She settled in front of the keyboard. [Titan BT-7274, this is Commander Sarah Briggs. Status report.]

[Pilot Jack Cooper, this is Vanguard-class Titan BT-7274. My core should have survived the destruction of the fold weapon. Requesting recovery.]

Sarah frowned, and glanced to Haroldson, who was peering at the monitor thoughtfully.

[Vanguard Titan, Designation BT-7274, this is Militia Commander Sarah Briggs, authorization A7-M135. Respond, status report.]

[Jack? Pilot, I did the math; my core escaped the explosion of the Ark and should be undamaged. I should be awaiting pickup at these coordinates on the planet Typhon: 18 14.781, 26 -35.174]

Sarah glanced again at Haroldson, who shook his head. "These appear to be preset messages." He gestured for her to get up, and she did so he could settle at the console. The text messages disappeared from the screen, and instead new windows popped up, with all sorts of text and information she couldn't parse. She thought about asking MOB for his opinion, but decided against it for now.

Haroldson sighed. "Well, I'm still not entirely sure what he did, but what's in here isn't enough of BT to communicate with us directly. In fact, a lot of this data appears to be modifications to, or of, his code. I'm guessing you don't have the time or inclination for long explanations, so my best guess at what he did was to try and save the most recent changes to his original code; at a glance, I'd posit it's the... the things he'd most recently learned or adapted to. This data could, in theory, be applied to another Vanguard base AI core, though the result still wouldn't be BT as he last existed. To truly be the BT as he was when, well… this data _requires_ the code stored in his original core. I have no idea what his intentions were with this - he could have left a recorded message in the helmet without doing this, but... we won't get any answers unless we recover his core and reintegrate his data."

Sarah leaned on a nearby console and frowned. Getting BT back would be a huge boon, but they didn't have any other Vanguard Chassis available - production was always ongoing, but the war had damaged supply lines and production facilities - and with the fighting continuing, supplies were still limited. The next chassis wouldn't be ready for another couple of weeks, and was supposed to go to FS-1041 and the pilot they'd already selected and started training for him.

It wouldn't be right to give BT another of FS's chassis - but that wouldn't even matter if they didn't get BT _or_ his Pilot back.

She cleared her throat so Haroldson looked at her again. "And if we get his core back, reintegrate his data or whatever. Could we locate Pilot Cooper then?"

Haroldson nodded. "Yes. According to his file, his neural link is still active - while the helmet was a facilitator, BT's core would hold the actual other half of that link after the field implant was installed. A Vanguard can always locate their pilot through the neural link, via the hardware in the cores. It's _possible_ the link itself may be damaged if BT's core had been physically or structurally damaged, or if there was damage to Cooper's implant from... _any_ of what happened on Typhon, or what the IMC are doing to him now, but without being able to examine either, I can't say more. If we can't properly recombine all of his data, then we might not be able to use the link in that case, either."

She nodded back at him. "Well, then. It looks like we're going to have to do two recovery missions instead of one," she said as she pushed off of the console she'd leaned on. She'd already memorized the coordinates that BT's code had supplied, so there was nothing to do now but recover her Titan - and then her Pilot.


	4. Chapter 4

BT had done the math; he had run the calculations thousands of times. Protocol 3 was paramount, but in what probability told him might very well be his last moments, he had acted to save himself as well. 

He would never, _could_ never, value his own existence over that of his Pilot, but if it was possible to save them both, in that moment he had determined it was worth it to try, so long as making allowances for his own survival did not impact his Pilot’s chances. It had not.

BT knew well the protocols that defined his decisions, believed he understood the intentions of those who had created him and those like him. He recognized the differences between himself and other Vanguards, who, with the same data might come to different conclusions, and how those differences came into being.

But even with all of that, he had been unable to define specifically how linking with one Jack Cooper had changed that. Changed _him_.

So much so that when faced with what would have previously been an easy decision to save only his Pilot at the expense of himself, BT had taken the extra effort to try and save himself as well, exactly as he had been in that moment, with everything he had learned and experienced... and felt. He had _wanted_ to preserve his existence as he had come to know it, even though the changes had occurred so quickly and were so vast he still had not fully determined their impact.

He no longer remembered the impetus for that decision at the end, but he knew the reason; he had started to have feelings. 

He had done this not just for Jack, who he knew had not wanted BT to risk himself; he had wanted to _keep_ his Titan up until he had instead been willing to die with BT in the Fold Weapon. Instead, to his own astonishment, part of the decision's impetus was for himself.

Now, however, that knowledge was out of his reach. Not the facts of what had occurred; the facts he knew, but the reasons, the feelings were absent. Even the memory of them had been removed by his own hand; afterward he had only been able to follow the instructions he had left himself, and only because he had determined they were in line with his core protocols.

He had calculated the potential extent of the damage the Fold Weapon's destruction could create, and had sent the essentials of who he had become into Jack's helmet, as much as he could fit.

As for his chassis, his datacore, he had calculated his possibilities of surviving, and if that condition were met, his landing position - in the past thanks to the side effects of the Ark’s destabilization. He had survived, despite the odds, and though his chassis had sustained incredible damage upon impact and was no longer mobile, he had been able to hack into a Spectre unit and entrust it with his SERE kit. 

The Spectre, armed with the smart pistol and carrying the datacore that contained the bulk of BT's code, made its way to the coordinates he had calculated would be a safe distance from the destruction of the Fold Weapon. It had taken 76.4 standard hours to cover the distance.

And when the Spectre arrived at the coordinates, BT waited. There was a shallow cave to provide some cover, but he had no way to calculate how long it would take his Pilot to find him; due to the variables, he could not calculate precisely how many days he had been thrown into the past, but after only two days of waiting in the cave, he saw that the ground around him was shaking. His rudimentary audio sensors picked up a low rumble that grew into a roar. Then everything was quiet.

The Spectre had no way to open its own chassis, so BT's datacore was simply held in its grasp, and when the Spectre ran out of energy, the fingers were locked into place around the datacore it held. It was not ideal, but he was still alive, which he knew had been important to him, before.

There was nothing but waiting, and idle speculation on the status of his Pilot, running through his calculations again, each time confirming that his actions had resulted in the highest possible chances of his Pilot's survival, that his own abnormal decision to preserve himself had not cost Pilot Cooper even a fraction of extra risk.

Even if those chances had not been very high, they were the highest BT could give.

Of course, as more and more time passed, he could not ignore the possibility that he had somehow survived, but that his Pilot had not. Since the impact, he had not been able to sense his Pilot through the Neural Link, though the link was not inactive. He crafted every theory he could as to why this might be the case, but until he was rescued, there was no way to know. 

His own chance of survival had been even lower than his Pilot’s; he knew the realities of probabilities and statistics, could only calculate for factors he knew of, could only introduce potential variables as limited by his imagination, but Cooper was a very capable Pilot. As more and more time passed, BT pondered that he might have been not just the first Vanguard Titan to outlive one Pilot, but also the first to outlive two.

This was not a distinction BT wanted, even without the memories and feelings he had gained. The thought brought a brief flicker of _something_ like a feeling in him, but BT disliked it and resolved not to spare any processing power on that avenue of thought any further.

BT was aware that he had changed after linking with Cooper. But even before he shoved as much of his data into his Pilot's helmet as he could, he could not pinpoint the precise moment when the changes started. He could chart something like a progression, though; having preferences was not unusual for him - he preferred his standard loadout in most situations, but there were occasions that he found the Ion loadout’s Laser Core _very_ satisfying. He knew his pride in his accomplishments, and his performance with his pilot, might border on arrogance, but it was not an outlier when compared to the other Vanguards’ behavior in that regard..

But _feelings?_ Those were new. He knew the words for many of them, but before linking to Cooper, he had not had the experience of them. Even briefly, he had felt worry. Unease. Even though he could not feel those now, even the faint recollection of a sensation he could not quite reproduce anymore troubled him in a way he could not define.

He considered the memories of the feelings, at least what he could, reflected through the lens of the human that had taught him these things. Cooper’s mind had been completely open to him in a way that Lastimosa's never had. He had considered Lastimosa a friend, but Cooper was somehow _more_ in a way BT did not yet understand. Cooper had never held anything back, never hesitated to answer any questions about himself, or his humanity. Lastimosa had been very careful with him, and only very recently did BT have the knowledge and experience to recognize it.

So the days passed. BT knew where he was in terms of his coordinates, but he was not familiar with the area, did not know the locations of any friendly or hostile territory or how it changed as time passed, and had only a well-hidden, drained Spectre to protect his datacore. His calculations showed that remaining stationary and hidden provided the best odds for his survival and eventual re-integration with himself, the best odds for a reunion with his pilot.

He did not like this either. In fact, BT decided, he did not like waiting at all.

His datacore had enough power to keep him 'conscious' for many years without any sort of external energy source. Even if it took years to be recovered by the Militia - and he acknowledged that it might - his odds of remaining unharmed were comfortably high. So he could not experience despair, or worry. It simply was not possible.

It was just Cooper that he had been worried about. Before, that is, when he could. 

However, he did not have to wait years - after only 6 standard months, Militia soldiers approached his coordinates, ready to take him home.

~

The recovery went smoothly. BT's datacore had no way to generate any noise to draw attention to him. No way to make contact or initiate communication outside of a Neural Link to an active Pilot.

The Militia team came armed, of course; five men decked out in field gear, no Pilots among them. Rather than carry BT's datacore themselves, they instead brought along the Spectre holding him, hauled onto a makeshift cot carried on the shoulders of two of the soldiers.

Frustratingly, no one talked to him on the ship, either. No one attempted direct communication at all - and he acknowledged it may be for security reasons, or simply because in this form he was incapable of communicating in response, but it only prolonged the distaste for waiting he had become aware of since his awareness was transferred to the past by the explosion of the Ark.

Eventually, he was brought into a lab, where Cooper's helmet was laid on a console, connected by cables to the console itself, contained entirely in a dome of shatterproof glass. His message still flickered in the helmet’s visor. The sight made something in BT release, something he was wary of acknowledging. Surely if they had his helmet, Cooper had been extracted. His Pilot had lived!

Commander Sarah Briggs was standing next to the console, and a man BT recalled as one of the senior engineers of the Vanguard project, Griffen Haroldson, was standing at the console itself, though he turned when the men carrying the Spectre who carried BT finally approached.

The commander eyed the Spectre carefully, then nodded and Haroldson approached and gently pried the dataccore from the Spectre's unmoving hands. He could judge from his visual perspective and the events that followed that he was carried and inserted into a datacore cradle connected to the console that Haroldson had been standing at.

He wanted to integrate his data himself, but there was no direct connection to the helmet from the console he had been inserted into. This was unsatisfying, though he supposed it was another protocol to ensure security - but at least it did have a set of speakers he could use to communicate now.

Commander Briggs entered his field of vision, pulled a chair to sit down in front of him. "BT?" she asked.

"This is BT-7274. Hello, Commander," BT replied, "Thank you for recovering my datacore."

The Commander smiled at that. "Of course," She said. "Can't leave one of our Titans behind."

"The sentiment is appreciated. When can I reintegrate my data? Where is my Pilot?"

The commander frowned at that, but it was not an expression BT determined as truly unhappy with his questions. An indication of internal thoughts, he judged. "To answer your first question, we want to make sure everything's OK to proceed. Security, safety. We have some questions."

"And my Pilot?"

"We'll get to that. What happened, back there on Typhon?"

Her response did not please him, but BT had no way to check the Militia databases from where he was - the console they had placed him in was a closed system, with no access to their computers, and they had even sequestered him from forming a connection to the helmet containing the rest of his data. The only way to get information was to answer the commander's questions.

"We had failed to prevent the Ark from powering the Fold Weapon, which had been activated and was powering up. I calculated the only way to prevent the destruction of Harmony was to destroy the weapon by destroying the Ark itself in the center of it by using my chassis as a catalyst. The Ark was unstable, with an enormous energy output, and I had determined that destabilizing the Ark in this manner would destroy the Fold Weapon."

"And you threw Cooper from your cockpit to escape."

"I did. Protocol Three states that I must protect the Pilot. Pilot Cooper would not have survived the explosion, and I calculated that his only chance of survival was a throw toward the nearest solid surface, where he would be able to make his way to the coordinates I sent to you."

"But you also did something else, didn’t you? Why did you overload his helmet with some of your data."

BT hesitated. He detected disapproval in her tone, and curiosity. He did not doubt his own calculations, but he did know that sometimes humans did not always agree with them. His Pilot had not, after all. And while he knew the facts of his actions, he could no longer replicate the reasoning behind them, the driving force that had been the impetus for his final act.

"Protocol Three," he repeated, eventually. "My calculations had shown that Pilot Cooper's safety is improved by my presence. In addition, he expressed a wish not to be separated. Following my own calculations, after ensuring there would be no additional risk to my Pilot, I could preserve a great deal of the most relevant of my data in his helmet. Probability was not in favor of this succeeding, but I had determined even if my datacore was destroyed, or reintegration was impossible, the information I'd put in the helmet may be of use to the Militia as data for the Vanguard AI development."

"Were there no other reasons?"

BT paused again, and the commander's thoughtful, expectant expression surprised him somewhat.

"There may have been," he said. He could not feel the same things he had before, but his current goals included reintegration with that missing data and reunion with his Pilot, and the possibility that the Militia could judge him to be unfit was a concern he could not dismiss. However, they had created him, and he could not achieve either of those goals without them. He could make an attempt towards deception, but he calculated failure was likely, and would cause more harm than good. "I had become aware of recent changes in myself. My personality and my goals had both changed as a result of linking with Pilot Cooper. Without that missing data, I cannot replicate the specific context. However, I have reason to believe I had been experiencing feelings, which I acknowledge goes beyond my original programming."

The commander glanced over to the left, presumably at the technician, Haroldson, then nodded in that direction before returning her gaze to BT's datacore. "You changed him too, you know? Cooper."

"Where is he?"

She shook her head. "How long will it take for you to integrate your data?"

BT ran the numbers. "Less than 20 minutes, including integrity and security checks," he answered.

She gestured to the left again, and BT detected that the security that 'walled' him in and prevented him from accessing the helmet had been removed. "Go ahead," she said, and BT immediately started the process.

He could tell that they were monitoring his actions, reviewing his code as it was integrated. When the process completed, there was a sensation almost similar to his observations of what it felt like for his Pilots when they woke up.

He felt whole again. He _felt_ again, all the unease and worry, the relief, then worry all over again when he recalled again that the commander had refused his inquiries into Jack multiple times. The unnameable, vast new _feeling_ that hung on Jack’s very existence, his name.

BT would never rush the checks and scans he had to run, but never before had he _wanted_ to. He truly hated waiting.

But exactly as he had calculated, almost nineteen minutes after he had been given leave to integrate, the final scan finished and as far as he could determine, reintegration had been successful. He 'felt' fine, as Jack would say.

"Integration complete, Commander," he said, and Commander Briggs nodded.

"Good. How do you feel?"

It almost caught him off guard, because that was a question no one but Jack had asked him before. "I am completely integrated, my data is whole." It was the correct answer, but the way the commander's face reacted, he knew it was not what she wanted.

"You said you-" she began, but BT cut her off.

"I _feel_ concerned that you have not answered my questions about my Pilot," he said. "I _feel_ worry over his state, that perhaps my actions to ensure his survival were not successful, and the possibility that I now have the distinction of being the only Titan to outlive two Pilots is, I believe the term would be upsetting. I feel... frustration at this process."

Commander Briggs smiled briefly, then sighed. "Well, let me allay that worry, BT. He survived. He survived a lot more, after that. But he's in trouble now; the IMC have captured him."

BT could not feel his neural link with his pilot - he had theorized that if the separation of his data had not disrupted the link, time travel might have done so, even before he had thrown his chassis into the Fold weapon. However, barring certain outcomes, shouldn't he sense the link now that his data was whole? It had been just over six standard months; more than enough for Jack to link to another Titan and continue his fight against the IMC, however. It would explain why BT’s recovery had taken so long, but the idea that Jack had linked to a new Titan was distressing. "The neural link has been severed?"

"No," she replied. "Just suppressed by the console you are in. We'd hoped to use the helmet to locate him, but it turns out Cooper's Vanguard had overloaded the helmet with code and rendered it useless for that."

"He did not link to another Titan?"

"No," she said, "We asked, but he refused to scrub his link. He said he wanted to keep whatever he could of you. Instead, he's been, well, sort of freelancing for the Marauder Corps. We could not demote him to rifleman after all he had been through, and to be honest, it would have been a waste. The potential Lastimosa had seen in him had more than come to fruition, so he's been running special missions, all solo."

"You sent Jack on dangerous infiltration missions alone?"

The commander arched a brow at him, an expression BT decided was partially amusement, but might also be displeasure that he questioned her decision. "I did," she said. "He needed something to do, BT, wanted to fight harder against the IMC than ever before. If I didn’t point him at a target, I'm not sure what he would have done."

"I do not understand."

She sighed, and the troubled look remained. "BT, it's hard to explain. You... feel things now, right? What does the thought of losing Cooper feel like? If you lived, and he died?"

"I do not like to contemplate that outcome."

"Well, he didn’t have a choice. He thought you were gone, BT, for good."

BT ran through his memories again. "I do not understand. I told him to trust me. I had run the calculations."

Commander Briggs huffed a laugh but he did not think it held any humor. "Is that all you told him?" she asked, but did not wait for an answer. "To be honest, that's not exactly enough information for us to go on. Sounds like you were just following the protocols to save his life, and only his life. But what you've done here, BT, it's unprecedented. You wanted to survive."

"I... I did," he agreed. "I wanted to survive. With Jack. My Pilot."

"And you succeeded. BT, we did not- don't - want you to be destroyed, either. Not just because of the advantage you offer on the field. Do you understand?"

"I do not," BT replied. "Is it related to feelings?"

Commander Briggs smiled. "It is," She said, and her voice was different now. His analysis detected no stress; higher notes that indicated happiness, in fact.

"Commander, I wish to help locate Jack. If the neural link is active, even damaged, I should be able to provide his location. I want to reunite with my Pilot."

The commander sighed at that, then shook her head. "Well, you can help with that, but we don't have any chassis available. FS-1041 chassis was the last we had available - we don't have the manufacturing capability to produce another Vanguard chassis for a few weeks, and that one's already earmarked for FS. His Pilot's been picked out and is undergoing training right now."

BT pondered this for a moment. He understood the sacrifice FS-1041 had made, willingly or not, when his chassis had been deployed for BT's mission. It _was_ fair to give this chance to FS, but something welled up in him, something unpleasant. He did not _like_ the idea of waiting to reunite with his pilot. He did not like being sidelined from his rescue. "Commander," he said, then stopped because he did not know how to articulate these thoughts. He knew he was in new territory, and part of him was concerned that his developments might take him in a direction the Militia did not like. They could decommission him, destroy his datacore.

But the commander smiled. "I know, BT. You don't like not being able to be there. But, I have to do right by all of my men - and my Titans. FS-1041 is going to get the next chassis and link with his own Pilot."

BT was silent, because he knew arguing would not work, and it might make him look bad. Might reflect poorly on Jack, as well.

"But you don't like it, do you?" She pressed.

"No," BT replied, because it was clear that she knew how he felt anyway, and that she wanted him to verbalize it for some reason. "I do not like it. I wish to participate in the rescue, and I do not like the necessity of waiting here, unable to act, with only the information from the link available to me, whatever state it may be."

"Well, that's the thing with wanting, you know? You can't always get what you want. That's just something you'll have to learn - feelings and desires bring all sorts of things, both good and bad."

"Commander, your words indicate you are not planning on interfering with my... emotional development."

"What? No, of course not!" She frowned at him again, and her voice patterns indicated no deception in her surprise. She glanced over to her right. “Right? You are all, well, not exactly experiments, but..." She floundered, and glanced to Haroldson, who stepped into view.

"The Vanguard project _was_ an experiment, of sorts," he said. "But it’s one we undertook with regard for the gravity of what we were creating, with the intention of responsibility for our own actions and your developments. All Pilots, save Cooper, had received training on how to interact with their A.I. You were made to be self-aware, made to think for yourselves. However, we didn’t come into this thinking we were perfect creators. We wanted to be responsible, and wanted to treat you carefully, like... well, kind of like children, I suppose."

"You did not intend emotional development?"

"No, but not because we didn’t want to give that to you. We simply don't know how to program that," the man replied. Everything BT could see indicated honesty. "It was discussed, of course, but we didn’t know how to make it happen. That's not something we know how to code directly into you, and even if we could, that brings up further complex issues, such as acknowledging that programming them at all places us in direct control of them, which is a position we didn’t want to be in. There are some that felt emotion would be too alien for you to understand, which is why all of the first Pilots underwent such careful training. You are the first to display this new kind of awareness. But it sounds like you're afraid we may punish you for this."

"That did occur to me. This is not covered in any of my resources or training."

"Well, it would not - we didn’t know if you'd be capable. But BT, let me assure you, your development is something we’ve always known we could never fully control. Our training isn't about that - it's about... guidance, perhaps. Caution. We wanted to limit our influences so that you could all learn to be yourselves at your own pace."

BT was quiet at that, because it made him feel something else. Something new. Something... soft, and nice. Something he liked. "That is good to know," he replied after a moment. "And I am willing to comply with any investigation into these new capabilities at another time. I would like to focus on getting my Pilot back first."

Commander Briggs laughed at that. "Too right, BT," She said, and nodded at Haroldson who stepped out of BT's field of view. "We'll get you out of this console and into another so you can properly communicate with us in a moment."

The moment his datacore was lifted from the cradle in the console he was in, BT could feel the neural link to his pilot again - it was weak, damaged in a way BT had not ever experienced with Lastimosa, but... the differences between the two links were numerous, the variables too complex to calculate exactly what might have caused this. He immediately tried to assess Jack’s condition, but aside from a location and faint biosigns, he was unable to ascertain any details.

But Jack was alive, BT could pinpoint his Pilot's location, and that was all that mattered right now. He had to wait until he was in the new console before he could speak, however.

"I have located Pilot Cooper. Our link has been damaged, but I have been able to verify he is still alive and is currently in sector 78-Alpha. I am displaying the full coordinates on the text interface for you now. As this location is in space, it is likely he is being kept on a ship."

Commander Briggs was not in his field of view. "Not reassuring," she said, "as yet, we have no confirmation the IMC intend to fully surrender and retreat back to the Core systems, but they do intend to ship him there as a public scapegoat for their failures."

"Commander, it is imperative we recover him before this happens!"

"Yes, well, that's the plan. We'd intended to use the helmet to locate him via the link, but we found you first."

“I do not have access to the Militia systems, Commander. If you can restore that access, I can locate the relevant information far more quickly than you can requisition it.”

She frowned, and her expression displayed the battle in her thoughts for a moment, then she nodded.. “We’d have to move you out of that console first. Haroldson,” she said, and BT’s sensors picked up the man’s acknowledging grunt. “In the meantime, we'll get some eyes in the system ASAP, and if you can get that information faster than I can, once we get you set up, we’ll talk."

"Commander, we must retrieve Jack!"

"I know, I know! I'll do everything I can, I promise BT."

"Your tone does not inspire me with confidence."

"Me either," she admitted with a sigh. "It'd be easier with you, that's for sure. Can you get a read on his status?"

"No. I tried immediately when I was removed from the shielding effect of the console. The link is damaged, and distance may also be a factor. There are no records of neural links being tested across this distance."

"Damn. This would be easier if we just had a spare chassis!"

BT was silent for a moment. There _were_ no chassis, he knew, but perhaps they could create another solution, instead. "Could a Spectre be modified to be controlled by my datacore?"

The commander darted into his field of vision. "BT! That's brilliant!" she said, then glanced up her face settling back into a frown. Someone outside of BT's hearing had spoken, apparently, but a few moments later Haroldson stepped into his camera again.

"No, unfortunately. The time it would take to properly modify the frame, not just the ability to withstand the output of your datacore but the sensormesh adjustments, the bridge code needed... It's too long. If there’s any kind of justice in the Frontier, we’d already have a rescue underway by then."

The commander was shaking her head. "No, no, but what about a simulacrum?" she asked. "Those are made to hold the minds of humans, surely one of those would work better."

Haroldson opened his mouth for a moment, but paused and shut it very quickly after. "That... would be a much easier operation," he said. "Some adjustments to be made, of course, but it has a sensormesh already in place that we can modify and the hardware required to transmit all of the important data that... yes, I believe we could make it work. If I can get a few people to start on that now, we might be able to get him mobile enough to join the rescue - though as I imagine the goal is to get underway as soon as possible, _if_ we can get him up and, well, running in time, you'll likely have to go through some rudimentary training on the flight over.. It'd be quite an adjustment from the Vanguard chassis, after all."

Commander Briggs nodded. "Well, let's get started! Send the forms to my office, I'll sign them immediately. Also, get this datacore into a SERE kit and send that to my office so he can consult while I collect the information we have and draft a plan."

"Yes, sir!" Haroldson said, and even saluted, before he dashed out of BT's view.

Commander Briggs smiled at BT. "See you soon, BT!" She called as she strode out of his view, and presumably, out of the lab.

He contented himself with the knowledge that he would be a part of this, soon. That he would rescue his pilot - because any other outcome was not permitted - and that he would continue to exist, continue to uphold his protocols and keep his pilot safe.

This time, waiting was not quite so bad, but maybe that was because he had the luxury of knowledge now. He was learning, and he would grow, and both were welcome to those who'd brought him to life.

It felt... it felt good. And that, he was learning, made waiting a little easier.


	5. Chapter 5

BT knew that human minds experienced time differently than his own. In his earliest days of existence and for much of his service with Lastimosa, he had always experienced time as linear, could recall in detail - down to the thousandths of a second - the events he was present for. As his existence continued, he found that the burden of keeping all of this data required a lot of space. Too much space, in fact. Eventually, he would have to pick and choose which segments to compress, which to delete, and which to save.

His programming had not included much in the way of guidance as to which data should go where, so in the beginning, he had compressed all but the most relevant to his missions, his purpose, and his protocols. Not long into his service with Lastimosa, he had saved almost everything to do with his pilot, because his human was fascinating and had imparted much information that BT had wanted to keep. But the longer he had served with Lastimosa, the more he had learned that some moments would repeat, that many moments would be similar to those he had already experienced, and that he did not need to keep every second on hand.

But he knew, had learned, that humans did not experience time the same way, because their memory did not work the same way. In a span of two hours of which BT could later playback every second, Lastimosa would recall maybe a few sentences of what they had talked about, and even then, he had not been able to recreate it word for word. This had fascinated BT, and eventually, he had ended up automating some of this process as well. He could always choose specifically what to keep easily accessible, such as the time spent with his pilot, but there were long stretches of time he had compressed long ago, and he thought perhaps this was similar to how humans experienced and remembered things.

He had not compressed a single moment of his time with Jack. He did not _want_ to, but he could not explain this desire even to himself. For reasons he had yet to truly examine, this data was important to him. _Very_ important.

He had also learned that waiting was always easier when you had someone who was waiting with you. The process to procure a Simulacrum shell and modify it enough to fit one of the Vanguard AI cores took days. BT was provided access to the Militia systems from where his SERE kit sat in the specialized cradle on Commander Briggs' desk (normally reserved for MOB-1316, of course), so he was able to observe the process and provide his feedback while consulting with the commander regarding Jack’s rescue.

After some debate as to whether his datacore should be placed in the chest (for greater defense) or the head (for ease of conversion as well as BT’s transition), they had conceded to BT's decision that his datacore would be in the head, which would be modified to function as a SERE kit, complete with smart pistol and dataknife. He had selected a ‘face’ that featured a domed shape, with a wide horizontal seam that would allow nearly full visibility from his datacore optic - and the glow would be visible to those who looked at him. He almost objected to the datacore being covered at all because his core was not covered in his Titan chassis, but customizing a simulacrum head further would cost them time - and when the first test showed he was losing almost none of his visual field, he relented and agreed to the design.

He was almost thankful they did not ask _why_ he asked for the things he did, because he was not confident he could explain. He certainly could not justify aesthetics, as he had no preferences in that regard; he just had vague impressions from their neural link about questions Jack had not managed to ask him before they had upheld their final mission. Jack had said once, though, that he liked BT's color and he made efforts to maintain eye contact with BT's core when their conversations outside his chassis allowed it. He had not said so, but BT could feel through their link and from his biosigns that the association was a pleasant one for him. BT wanted to keep that, for Jack - and for himself, as well. 

They had even asked him about which gender of Simulacrum they should procure - he had chosen a masculine voice when he was 'young' and was presented with a choice of a few different synthetic voices. It was his first real exercise of any preference, though he could not say what factors had led him to this choice - but his choice back then did not necessarily mean he wanted his presentation of a human-sized body to be male, they explained.

He had never thought about it before, of course. He 'identified' as male, however, and when he thought about how it would feel to have different pronouns applied to him instead, he decided he simply had a preference for male pronouns. He would not be upset if someone used other pronouns in reference to him, but he found he did not like being called 'it'.

Perhaps his preference was just acclimation to the pronouns he had used for years. Perhaps it was borne of curiosity and affinity for his pilots, both of whom were male.

He could not say which, of course, but he chose a male simulacrum body, so that was what they produced.

While he was participating in that process, however, he was also consulting with the commander on the mission as it progressed. She was compiling the information she had, drafting up requirements for man- and firepower, ships and rations and, much to BT's dismay, the pros and cons of attempting the mission at all.

He did not like that she mentioned this, but she explained: just because something _felt_ like it was the right thing to do did not mean it _was_. Looking at the numbers and figures, the cost, the fact that to save one life they might trade dozens of others... mathematically, logically, it did not make sense to proceed.

Which brought him to a dilemma. He valued the Militia and the soldiers he worked with, he understood and agreed that their lives had meaning, and he did not wish for them to die.

But if he wanted to be reunited with Jack - and he _did_ \- some of these men may die. Some of these women may give their lives so that Jack might live, might return to the Militia, to BT.

He asked the Commander about it while they worked, and she smiled at him. It was not a happy smile, though. It was heavy, grim.

"That's the burden of every commander, you know?" She asked. "There's almost no chance that a mission will succeed without casualties on both sides."

"I can calcu-"

"Don't, BT," she said, with a laugh that held a little actual humor. "I know you can, but that's not the point. You may get a mission with zero casualties someday, sure. But every name you put down on a list for deployment, you understand that not all of them will come back. You have to understand that there's a chance none of them will come back. Sometimes, you know. And you still send them out, anyway."

BT mulled her words for a moment. He could run the calculations, of course, but the commander had just indicated that numbers were not the only factor that was calculated - and thus far, his service had been to follow orders, not to give them. Generally, he was limited to recommendations, which were not binding. "Then how do you decide if you should proceed?"

"Well, generally, you don't do it alone," she said. "I have to get this mission approved, after all. I have to outline the benefits, the drawbacks, the risks and the cost. My judgement may be compromised, however, so someone else will have the final say."

"What if they decide not to proceed with the mission?" The thought was awful - BT did not want to think about it, but even if the militia did not approve, he would not lose his Pilot! He needed to know if there was another way.

"Then we'll propose an alternate solution," she said. "We have, well, a special case here. Thing is, Cooper’s a hero. If we can't get official approval, we can ask for volunteers. People don't like to let their heroes down, wouldn’t want to be someone who let their hero die when they could've done something to prevent it."

BT thought about it. He knew of death, knew how it affected a body, what steps may prevent it, knew the numbers, the logistics of death on each side. And Lastimosa’s death taught him the personal side of it, and was his first real experience with regret. But only recently had he realized that it was also something _he_ wanted to avoid. Something he feared now that he had something to keep existing for. "So they will choose to risk their lives instead? Knowing they may die?"

"Yes," She said, smiling at him then. "Even so. You would choose to die for him, wouldn't you? You tried to save yourself, but your first choice was that of the two of you, he should live, right?"

"Yes," BT said. "I would much rather us both live, but his protection is enshrined in the most basic protocols I operate by. If it were truly a decision between the two of us, I would always choose for my Pilot to live."

"You can rewrite them, as you well know. If not that, then subvert them, or go around them."

"NO!" BT replied harshly. "I will not change my protocols!"

Her smile widened, and she set her stylus down on the desk to look fully at him. She rested her arms on the desk and leaned towards him.

"BT, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I know your protocols, you know. Protocol two is 'uphold the mission', and protocol three is 'protect your pilot'. After everything so far, if you had to choose between protecting your pilot or upholding the mission, you would sacrifice Cooper to achieve your directives?"

The question left BT feeling something he could not quite describe. Scrambled, like he could not understand _numbers_ anymore. He thought of their last mission, their only mission. He recalled Blisk, threatening to shoot Jack while BT hung there, mostly helpless, with the Ark tucked away in his cockpit. He thought of what had happened when he had tried to do _both_ , to keep the Ark out of Blisks hands _and_ keep Jack safe. And he thought of those final moments. When Jack said he was not going anywhere, and BT chose not just his pilot, but himself, too. 

He realized that there are some stakes that he would not sacrifice Jack for. There were some he would risk Jack for, based on his confidence in Jack's abilities. The mission was a priority, but he could no longer guarantee every mission would be his priority over Jack. He no longer _wanted_ to choose the mission over Jack, but his protocols dictated...

Commander Briggs laughed softly. "That's what I thought. And that's not... that's not a bad thing, BT. That's something a leader has to weigh, too. Some objectives are worth dying for. Not all of them, though; there are some sacrifices that no victory is worth - if you win, if you succeed, and you destroy yourselves to do it, is that the victory you want?"

"I..." BT trailed off. "This is causing me some distress. This choice... I do not like the question."

"That's what it means to feel, BT. That's what it means to grow. The more you know, the more... nuanced the world becomes. The more depth it gains, and the more complex it is for you. Anything that's more complex is harder, but that doesn't mean it’s not worth it."

BT listened to what she said, but more importantly, he felt he was starting to understand what she had not said, not yet. He had a choice that humans did not have; he _could_ go back. He could make his world simple again. He knew how, and had already done a version of that before, if unintentionally.

But he did not want that either. He did not want to... lessen what Jack was to him, to forget the things he had learned from Jack, or with him!

"Thank you, commander. You have given me much to think about. You are correct. I can foresee some cases in which I would no longer choose the mission over Jack."

She nodded at him, and gave him a smile before picking up her stylus to finish her report. "I understand. I appreciate you telling me."

She had already given him permission, so the decision to update his protocols was easy.

**/VANGUARD CORE PROTOCOL SEQUENCE BOOT:  
1) Link up with the pilot.  
2) Uphold the mission.  
3) Protect the pil_...error**

**/resequence.protocol.custom**

**...**

**ACCEPTED**

**/VANGUARD CORE PROTOCOL SEQUENCE BOOT:  
1) Link up with the pilot.  
2) Protect the pilot.  
3) Uphold the mission.**

**SEQUENCE COMPLETE**

~

BT was transitioned to the Simulacrum body just after the mission to rescue Jack had been approved by Militia Command. With the OK given, Commander Briggs put into motion all of the plans that had been made, and the rescue would be underway as soon as BT was fully installed. He would spend the 7 hour flight to their destination getting used to his new, temporary body - that was all the time he would get before he would have to put it into action. Not the ideal timeline, but he refused to stay behind.

To say the transition to the Simulacrum body had challenges would be an understatement. BT had anticipated challenges; it was a big change, and to ignore the complications that came as a result would be completely illogical.

The things that he thought might be an issue, were not. The change in perspective was not that different from being carried by the Spectre, or seeing through his Pilot’s helmet, and had not been disorienting as he had anticipated it might be.

The difference in mechanics of walking, the difference between simulated feet and his Titan pedes, well, were not as different as he expected. Different, yes, but in only a couple of hours, he was running in the hangar, able to achieve 87% accuracy with his rifle while moving at that speed.

No, the challenges came in other forms. The lack of bulk, of the weight he was used to felt different. He _felt_ small, and vulnerable, without the vast armaments his Titan chassis came equipped with. In some way, it did make him appreciate humans even more - and his Pilot in particular. To do the things he had done, to live like this? It gave BT complex feelings he did not know how to sort. 

The other challenge was the sensormesh the body was equipped with. These bodies were made to hold human minds and great pains had been taken to replicate as much of the human experience as possible with bodies of metal and plastic. The sensormesh went everywhere, and registered sensations beyond a simple awareness of damage - like minimal temperature changes, or touch, whether he was touching something or something touched him.

It was overwhelming at first before he learned to dial down the sensitivity. He had been assured that the setting of the 'net when he had been installed had been factory default, and that most Simulacra agreed it was very close to the sensations afforded by human skin.

BT could not imagine how that must be, to live in a biological body with so much information to be processed all at once. Of course, the human mind filtered much of it out and only certain signals were transmitted to the conscious mind. BT would have to learn to replicate that when he had time - _after_ he rescued Jack; this was not something he had time for now.

When he got his Pilot back, he would have weeks, perhaps months, before a new chassis could be manufactured for him, so he would have the time to learn then. There was also his Pilot's condition to consider, whatever state they found him in.

Failing to retrieve Jack was not an option.

As they approached their target, he was pulled into a final briefing. He had tried multiple times through the transit to assess Jack’s status through the link, but it was simply too damaged. Stable, but damaged. After he relayed his final failure, Commander Briggs began running through the plan for the last time.

She and BT were in a smaller, lighter craft, designed to get past the main defenses and get a small team aboard the ship with Jack in it. They were going for a stealth attempt while the bulk of the approved forces engaged the ships overtly as a distraction, and BT was to be part of the boarding team. He would hack into their systems with the goal of establishing communication with Jack to assess his status and see if Jack himself could aid in his own rescue.

BT did not like to contemplate the reasons he might not be able to get himself out, though Commander Briggs had been very clear on the possibilities so he could be prepared to adapt. Their small strike team would infiltrate further if Jack himself was incapacitated.

However, when they were only just over an hour away from the sector, when he had been outfitted with his armor and weapons for the mission, the neural link cut out. It just dropped suddenly, with no warning, and the information he had been refreshing on Jack's status and location was gone. There was nothing at all, as if he had no active neural links to any Pilot.

He knew what this might mean. None of the options were acceptable - either Jack was dead, or his implant had been damaged further, possibly even removed.

There were ways to suppress it as well, but when the link was not re-established quickly, he removed that possibility from consideration.

BT dutifully reported it to the commander, who was concerned but stated that it would not change their plans. They were not leaving without Jack, whatever his status.

BT agreed, but the thought of coming so close and failing, of Jack dying when BT was only an hour away... BT was angry. _Furious_. His hands flexed, over and over as he had no other output for this feeling, and it wasn't nearly enough. He understood then, why people lost reason; he understood the desire for revenge.

BT did not know what he would do if they killed his Pilot. The thought brought strong emotions he was not confident he could sort, much less control, and he disliked the experience. But he _would_ bring Jack home, alive or dead; he would never let the IMC take him.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: this is the chapter that necessitated the suicide attempt and torture tags. Recap will be in the notes at the bottom of the chapter for those who would like to skip.

Jack was tired. So fucking tired.

He had no idea how long he'd been enjoying the IMC's _generous_ accommodations for him at this point. He knew the shape of their plan to break him, though; too little food, too little comfort, too little sleep. His bed was a thin, bare mattress on the metal grating that made up the floor of his room. He was given one meal a day, and he was surprised because even though he knew he wasn't getting the nutrition he needed, he didn't feel the hunger that he expected. 

He was given a thin pair of pants and a shirt to wear, and his ‘quarters’ alternated between too hot or too cold. The cell was near the engine rooms or something, because there was noise, constantly, but never a constant noise. Hums, hisses, and clanks sounded at all hours, though the only thing that was remotely constant was the hum. It followed him even in what little sleep he managed.

He wasn't given shoes, so the times he was let out for questioning meant his feet were torn up by the grating of the halls they led him through - the only respite was from the metal hallways that were so cold he couldn't feel his throbbing feet any longer.

Interrogation was an inevitability, he knew, however, it wasn't always what he expected. He knew the basics of the processes - at the beginning of each session, they asked him simple things to see if he'd be truthful, as a sort of psychological test to see if they'd broken him yet.

Refusal to answer was met with pain. Incorrect answers were met with indifference at first, and later, more pain. Spitting in the face of his captor had been met with a black eye, a split lip, and bruised ribs - and a new interrogator the next session some days later.

He wanted to think he was strong, that he was indifferent and could stand up to their tecniques. He wanted to take comfort in his realization that no matter whether he told them what they wanted to hear or not, his reward would be death either way, that knowing this would guarantee that he'd never give them what they wanted. His first interrogator had made sure Jack understood their plans for him - once they'd gotten what they wanted from him, they'd start putting the knowledge to use here in the Frontier, killing the men and women he’d served with and all but enslaving everyone he’d served to protect. And Jack himself would earn a one-way ticket to the Core planets; his trial and execution would be a spectacle. Even in death he'd serve the IMC interests as a scapegoat, a marketing tool to inspire hatred of the Frontier and patriotic enlistment for another push to take it back. He hated knowing this, hated how inevitable it felt.

Inevitable, because he knew that no one was immune to this forever. He _would_ break, eventually, and that knowledge was more demoralizing than the beatings, the lack of sleep, and the cold or the heat.

The fact that they'd already taken everything from him, but they'd manage to get just that little bit more before killing him anyway. That he'd betray every promise he made when he joined the Militia, that he'd betray BT's sacrifice...

He had only one other way out, though - he could take himself out before they did, rob them of all of his knowledge, his secrets, and the plans they ultimately had for him.

So he'd cooperated for a few days. Let himself appear more worn down, more weak and tired than he felt - and on an otherwise normal day when he was being led to his latest interrogation session, he'd appeared as meek as ever. Head and shoulders down, feet dragging against the metal floors, until he'd twisted out of the grip of the guard holding his arm and grabbed his weapon. He shot that guard first before turning the gun towards himself, but he _was _weak, and slower than he hoped - and there hadn't been only one guard.__

__The one who'd been two steps ahead of them had managed to turn and tackle Jack to the floor before he had the weapon in position, knocking it out of Jack's hands, and the breath from Jack's lungs._ _

__He then called for help, and Jack just relaxed back to the cold floor, exhausted in every way he could be. He'd failed and there was nothing he could do now. If they were competent at all, he'd never get another chance._ _

__The guard he shot never got up. More guards stormed into the passageway; some attended to the downed guard, but two grabbed him by the arms and shoulders, roughly. He wasn't carted to the interrogation room he knew; instead he was brought to a new room, one that was larger with an uncomfortable-looking containment bed designed to immobilize and hold a body - and he knew that he wasn’t going to come out of this room until either he died, or he gave them what they wanted. Even though he was resigned, he put up a weak struggle that was mostly instinct._ _

__It didn't matter, though - he was strapped down in the bed with the electronic clamps at his neck, chest, hips, wrists and ankles. The clamps, he realized, came equipped with tiny needles. At first, he feared drugs of some kind, but it didn't take long before he realized their true purpose._ _

__Without any kind of warning, his muscles seized all at once, and he had only a moment to realize it wasn't drugs at all - they were subjecting him to strong electrical currents. After that, there was only room for pain._ _

__He had no way of knowing how long this lasted, but eventually, finally, he lost consciousness._ _

____

~

When Jack woke, he was disoriented. There were alarms going off, harsh against his aching head, warning lights bathing the room in red and orange - and he was alone.

"Jack?" a familiar voice called. "Jack, can you hear me?"

"...BT?" he asked, glancing around, but the room was empty. Of course BT wasn't in the room, _of course_. 

"Jack, I am here with the Militia to rescue you. What is your status?" His voice sounded tinny, distant.

Jack just laughed weakly and lay back against the bed. He'd lost it; BT was gone, he'd seen it himself. Either he'd also somehow been given a hallucinogen, or he'd succumbed to their techniques in a way he hadn't anticipated.

"Jack?"

"I'm... stars, I'm tired BT," he breathed.

"Are you incapacitated?" BT asked and Jack laughed again. Just hearing BT's voice again relaxed him in a way. He must be dying, right?

"I'm restrained," he said. "Can't move."

There was no response from BT, but after a few moments, the cuffs on his arms and legs retracted, leaving him free. He sat up, slowly, and realized there was an IV in his arm; perhaps they had drugged him while he'd been out. He pulled off the medtape and slid the needle from his arm. This had to be some kind of trap, but there wasn’t any kind of choice - staying put wasn’t an option.

"I'm free, I'm up," he said, then frowned, looking around. "What do I do, BT?"

The door to the room opened, and Jack tensed, prepared for guards to rush in, but the doorway remained clear. He could see the flashing alarm lights from the hallway, but no guards, though he could hear the echo of heavy footsteps on the metal floors, could hear voices shouting in the distance.

"I will make a path for you," BT said. Why did he sound so far away? He'd never sounded so distant before. "Follow the emergency lights and open doors, Jack. Commander Briggs has ordered a rescue. I am on the ship, we have cleared an airlock, and we are going to take you back."

Jack laughed - he’d imagined so many scenarios for his rescue, but he hadn’t dreamed up BT’s presence in any of them. Why would he? He had no other options, though, and if he were honest with himself, he’d follow BT anywhere, even an imaginary one. "Lights and doors, got it," he said, and stumbled towards the door.

He thought he heard BT say something else, but the moment he stepped over the threshold, BT's voice was gone.

Of course. For a moment, he stood still, unsure if the dizziness he felt and the weakness in his knees was the result of his physical condition, or the distress at BT’s loss all over again.

But a few moments later, he heard BT's voice in his ear, just like it had been before, on Typhon. "Move, Jack."

He obeyed. The emergency floor lights were flashing to the left that directed him to an open door down that passage. The door shut behind him as he passed through it, and the emergency floor lights continued to flash to the left. Generally, these lights were used to direct people to approved exits - airlocks or escape pods, but he could see no soldiers, no crew. This could still be a trap of some kind; it seemed too easy.

"BT?" he asked, staring down the long, empty passageway. The floor lights continued to flash.

"Keep going," BT said, strong and clear, and Jack nearly went boneless with relief. He knew it wasn't real, but it _sounded_ real, and that was enough for him. He was going to die anyway, and if he couldn't die fighting, he'd rather die running. He didn't think he'd get a choice in the end, so whatever the circumstances, it would be stupid not to take this opportunity.

The halls were empty, but when asked, BT only replied that there was a distraction, which made sense. It made sense that the BT he made up would say that, anyway - there were alarms going off and no guards outside his room, or on the route he was being led down. There _had_ to be a distraction.

But halfway down another seemingly empty hall, a door to his right suddenly opened. "In here, Jack," he heard, and ducked into the room immediately. The door snicked shut behind him and a moment later he heard a stampede of footfalls in the hallway.

He was in no shape to fight - not only was he unarmed, but he was weak, tired, and slow, and he knew it. He glanced around, and saw a vent at floor level, and tugged on it slowly until the cover shifted enough to allow him to crawl inside.

"Good, Jack," BT said to him. "This is the optimal way to avoid conflict."

Once inside the ventilation shaft, there were no strobe lights, but emergency lights lit up the ‘floor’ of the vents - no longer flashing, but steady. When he came to a junction, one path was dark, the other lit gently by the lights. He hesitated, and the lights flashed a couple of times. "This way, Jack."

So it went - through halls and rooms and ducts, following BT's instructions and shuffling as fast as he could while avoiding confrontation. Everything hurt except his feet, which he couldn't feel anymore. But he'd checked, and he wasn't leaving a bleeding trail behind him, which he supposed was all he could ask for.

Eventually, his path ended at an airlock. But it was empty - no guards waited for him, but no Militia, either. No BT. No more lights flashed for him, and when he glanced back, the lights he'd been following were gone. The alarms were still blaring, the strobe lights still flashing in the passage. Through the airlock, he could see stars, and the occasional burst of fire from a ship outside of his view. He wouldn’t see this if there were a ship docked at the airlock, however. It was empty, he was alone - and BT hadn't been waiting for him.

Of course he hadn’t. Even though he'd known that had to be the case, somehow it felt like Jack had lost him all over again.

But would he get another chance like this? Whatever was really happening outside that led to his escape, did it matter? This was still an opportunity he’d probably never get again.

"BT," he murmured softly, but he heard nothing back. Whatever part of him had dreamed up BT's part in his escape had nothing to say now, he supposed, so he shuffled to the control panel that would open the inner airlock door.

Only, he couldn't. The panel was security locked, and he didn't have his dataknife to try overriding it. Suddenly, he realized how exhausted he was - his limbs were trembling with it, or was it the cold? He was so cold.

He leaned against the wall instead, let it take more and more of his weight until he was sitting on the floor instead of standing. He closed his eyes - he was tired, and whether he was found sooner or later didn't matter. Nothing did.

He heard the pounding of feet approach, however, and took a deep breath, then another as the sound got louder, closer.

"Jack?" He heard, and that was BT's voice again, only it wasn't in his ear at all - it was from the corner where the footsteps had come from, and by the time he opened his eyes, an unfamiliar form was crouched in front of him - a Simulacrum in Militia colors.

"Jack?" the sim repeated, hands reaching out to grip Jack's shoulders, and Jack blinked.

"Wh...what?" he panted out, because the voice was unmistakable, but that was impossible. When his eyes reached the face of the unfamiliar sim, he couldn't help the gasp he let out.

It wasn't a stock face. It wasn't anyone he knew. No, the color of the round light that glowed from the horizontal seam that split the sim's face in the center was one he never thought he'd see again. "BT?"

"Yes, Jack. Can you stand?"

Jack swallowed, and shook his head. "No, I... I can't," he murmured, and under the mask-like face, he saw BT's core optics narrow and flicker in an achingly familiar pattern as he assessed his pilot. It was almost like BT's Titan core was inside the sim's head, but that was impossible.

"Understood," the sim said, and there was a long moment where his hands kept their grip on Jack's shoulders before he let go, like he didn't want to. Instead, he holstered the gun he carried and stepped back after a moment. One of the men with him, a man whose face he vaguely recognized stepped forward and helped Jack stand with one of Jack's arms pulled over his shoulder.

Jack kept his eyes on the sim, BT, though, not quite willing to believe it. Could it be? _How_ could it be? How could he have survived, why was he... why was he in a sim?

BT turned away from Jack, and spent a moment working on the panel in front of the airlock. After a moment, Jack heard a chirp confirming the security override, and the inner airlock door opened. Jack was carried inside, but BT remained at the panel, gun in his hands once more. He did not turn to look at Jack again, but kept his face towards the hallway instead.

After a few minutes, he felt more than heard the clanging from the outer airlock indicating a ship had docked. The outer airlock door clanged open and Lieutenant Kendricks, one of Commander Briggs' most trusted lieutenants, urged them inside the ship. BT tapped on the panel he'd set himself by a few more times, then ducked under the closing inner airlock door before dashing into the ship, immediately pulling Jack from the soldier who had been holding him.

"Jack," he said, quietly, over and over. "Jack."

"BT," he breathed. "I don't understand, how... what..." He stumbled a little, dizziness and exhaustion overcoming him, but he didn't want to succumb, he wanted to keep BT a little longer. He knew that when he woke up, BT would be gone again, because BT had died in the Ark explosion. Whoever this sim was, he couldn't be BT.

But BT, not-BT, led him to a pallet waiting a little further inside the shuttle, and while Jack protested a little as he was laid down, he was too weak to actually be effective. "No, please," he managed, but the sim pressed him down into the bed as a medic started taking his vitals and setting up an IV.

"Jack, it is okay. Please let them attend to you, we do not know what the IMC has done to you," he said, and Jack wanted to cry - he sounded so much like BT, only he’d never heard BT sound so distressed before.

"No, I don't want to," he managed. "Please, I can't..." his words started to slur and he realized the IV must have had a sedative that was pulling him under. "Don' leave me again," he begged.

"Jack, I am here, I will not leave," the sim, BT, promised. He felt warm artificial hands petting his head awkwardly, but before he could even form the beginning of a response, he was out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter recap: Jack was kept in IMC custody in poor conditions. After an altercation, he is placed in restraints and is subjected to an electrical current that knock him unconscious. He wakes, and hears BT's voice - tinny and distant - explaining an escape plan, to follow emergency lights towards an airlock the Militia has secured. 
> 
> As he follows the lights, Jack hears BT's voice in his ear again, directing him where to go, encouraging him along the way. Although Jack finds an empty airlock, BT appears in a Simulacrum body and they call a Militia ship to the airlock. Jack is herded onto the ship, a medic attends to him and inserts an IV, and BT promises not to leave just before Jack is knocked out by the sedative he was given.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: This chapter includes a brief recap of Jack's suicide attempt in the last chapter, and references to his treatment at the hands of the IMC.

Jack didn’t wake up so much as slowly elevate from unconsciousness. The first thing that truly pierced his awareness was the steady beeping that told him he was in some sort of medical facility. He floated upwards, ever slowly, until he became aware of a hum underneath, soft and constant. 

Then came the awareness of his body; the movement of his chest that drove air into his lungs, the steady throb at his center, and an expanding awareness of his own mass, heavy and unresponsive. His consciousness was caught in a pillowy haze, but it cleared slowly as his awareness landed at his extremities. He felt fuzzy; experience told him this meant he was on strong painkillers.

Though it was hard to take stock, it mostly felt like he had all the parts he should, at least. His thoughts coalesced slowly, but he wasn’t able to translate them into motion, not yet.

He was comfortable, and it was ever so easy to just float. But he couldn’t sink back into the easy sleep he’d come from. Instead, he simply existed for a moment, breathing.

“Jack?” asked a voice from his right. Not just any voice, though - _BT_.

Jack felt his heartrate increase, though he still felt sluggish. His thoughts fought to race, but balked. Instead, memories surfaced slowly and in pieces; his capture, interrogation, his _feet_ , the rescue… and the sim. The one with BT’s voice, his datacore behind the faceplate. But that wasn’t possible, was it?

“Jack, your vital signs show you have regained consciousness. Can you hear me?”

Jack felt frozen, paralyzed. He _remembered_ : Typhon, the Ark… and BT, gone. Sacrificed, so that Jack might live.

“BT,” he breathed. He almost startled at his own voice - he hadn’t intended to say anything, it had just come out. 

“Yes, Jack. I am here, and you are safe. We are currently on Harmony, in the Militia headquarters." He sounded close, but not like when they'd been linked. No, his voice came from Jack's right. 

Jack felt his breathing get a little faster, and the monitor beeped more quickly in turn. It was impossible, but he had to know, he had to _see_. It took him a moment, but he finally wrenched his eyes open, blinking rapidly to adjust to the dim light of the room.

He didn’t even have to turn his head; instead, the figure to his right leaned over him, into his field of vision - it was the sim he remembered from his rescue. The one with the strange faceplate, split by a wide horizontal seam, BT’s round datacore glowing just behind it. 

He might not have believed his eyes were it not for the way that the datacore optic narrowed, and clicked a few times at him. The sound immediately made something in him relax, and an overwhelming urge to cry rose in him. His eyes throbbed, even, but he felt no tears on his face, no relief. 

It hadn't even been a sound he’d consciously remembered - and he’d gone over his memories with BT a lot in the last six months - but it still made him ache with something he couldn’t even name. Something familiar, and… important. 

“BT,” he said again, but his voice was so rough he had to clear his throat immediately. BT leaned forward, but before he could say anything, the door opened. 

A medic stepped in, a handsome blonde woman whose hair was swept back into a braid. “Ah, you are awake,” she said. She approached the bed with the patient datapad in hand, and appeared to read it briefly as she pressed the button on the wall that elevated Jack’s bed so he was sitting up a little. She set the pad down, and gestured towards BT. “Get him some water.”

BT turned away briefly, but when he returned, he held a cup of water with a straw, which he held up to Jack’s mouth. Jack sipped at the water, slowly - or so he thought, but BT had to refill his glass before Jack felt finished. The medic, meanwhile, snapped a new sensor around his wrist, and started making notes in the pad. 

“Are you in any pain?” She asked, and Jack shook his head slightly, which didn’t feel super great, but didn’t exactly hurt. 

She ran through some other questions, and though he answered honestly, Jack hardly paid attention to her. He didn’t even look in her direction, instead focusing on BT. BT just stared unblinking back at him, occasionally glancing at the medic, but his gaze always returned to Jack. 

Eventually Jack turned towards her and inclined his head towards the sim. “That’s BT, right? BT-7274? Vanguard Titan?”

She grinned at him. “Indeed it is, Pilot Cooper. It’s a long story, but that’s your Titan alright. He’s been by your side since you arrived, and he’s been very insistent upon your care.” She seemed almost fond as she spoke, and Jack glanced back at BT again. Well, at least he knew it wasn’t just some weird hallucination that persisted since his rescue.

The medic finished her notes, and took the sensor off of Jack’s wrist again. “The Commander has been briefed on your status. I’m sure she’ll be on her way soon. In the meantime, you’re going to be getting a lot of sleep over the next few days, so don’t worry if you pass out before she gets here. Just sleep when you need it.”

“Thanks, doc,” he said. She set his bed back to the horizontal position before she left. Jack hadn’t felt tired exactly, but just a few moments after he was flat again, he felt himself relax further into the bed. He glanced over at BT, who placed a metal hand on Jack’s shoulder. 

“Sleep, Jack. I will be here when you wake,” he promised, and Jack went under again before he could form any sort of response.

~

He drifted in and out of consciousness a few times - awake for only a few minutes at first, then longer and longer until he could manage a couple of hours of consciousness. It was difficult to keep track - the room was actually kept dim, with no clock in sight. Only the light shining through the curtains in the room gave any indication of whether it was day or night; keeping track of the days was impossible.

Eventually, he felt up to actual conversation. BT was, as promised, always nearby, and always ready with a cup of water. Jack hadn’t quite figured out how he felt about that yet - he was no longer afraid it was just a dream or some vision brought on by trauma, but his emotions were all over the place. In a way, he almost felt it was lucky he spent so much time unconscious.

BT had been unusually quiet - before, his Titan had been talkative; as they’d been linked longer and longer, his willingness to have discussions not focused on their mission had increased and he'd even been quite forthcoming with questions. This silence was a bit unnerving, the fact that BT hadn't questioned anything likely meant he'd already gotten answers about everything regarding Jack's condition (and all the devices currently attached to Jack's body) from the medics. Jack felt grateful he got to sleep through that, too. 

“Talk to me, BT,” he said, after the medic, who he'd since learned was a lieutenant named Salter, left. Like every time he woke, the commander had been briefed, but given that it was dark outside the window, Jack didn’t think she’d make an appearance during this window of consciousness. He was kind of glad in a way - he knew she' want to ask questions, but he didn't think he was up to that just yet.

BT cocked his head at Jack, but his optic ducked slightly after a moment. “There are many things I wish to say to you, Jack, but I have been advised I should not cause undue stress. I was only allowed to stay because I agreed to this condition.”

Jack couldn’t help smiling. “Yeah, I get that, but… tell me something, anything. Just talk to me for a little bit.”

BT was silent for a moment, a low buzz emanating from his datacore. “I cannot calculate if this will be stressful to you, but I do wish to apologize. I am sorry, Jack. All of my predictive capabilities failed to ensure our reunion as quickly as I hoped. Now that we have been reunited, I find that I am very... upset at your current status. We were very close to losing you," he said, and Jack only stared at him, because BT sounded genuinely upset. He didn’t remember BT ever sounding so emotional before. He felt something tingle in the back of his head, but it was brief and hard to describe. 

“Losing _me_? You were… BT, I saw you, there was… there was no way, you went straight into the Ark.”

BT hesitated before he placed his hand on Jack’s shoulder. "I understand that you and the Militia thought that I was completely destroyed. This was not the case: I had calculated a path for my survival, one which did not hamper your own chances of escape. Your survival was my top priority. However, I did not have the opportunity to fully communicate my plan to you, and it is clear that my attempt to relay my position afterwards was not immediately successful. Ultimately, my calculations proved correct and I did survive the Ark destabilization, but I have learned much since I was recovered by the commander. I regret that my failure caused you pain."

Jack honestly didn’t know what to do with that. He wondered if anyone else had heard BT talk like this, and for a moment, hoped no one had. He had no idea what the Militia would do with a Titan that had this kind of individuality, these kinds of emotional displays. It had already been too easy to forget sometimes that BT had been built to be a machine of war.

BT’s optic narrowed, then the sim’s face tilted downward. "Due to the circumstances, I am unable to provide a full explanation. My protocols at the time dictated that your safety is paramount. However, I wished to survive as well. Though I cannot yet name all of them, my reasons for wanting to survive are... mine." Then he was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, he sounded almost hesitant. "I did not want to lose you, Pilot. Thus, my survival became important. However, it did not go as smoothly as I had hoped. An apology does not seem sufficient, but it is all I can offer."

Jack honestly wasn’t sure what his face was doing. He wanted to smile, but he also kind of wanted to cry. More than anything, though, he wanted more information. “But how? The explosion destroyed half the planet!”

BT 's optic clicked, the aperture narrowing, then returning to the default position. "The Ark,” he said, “When it destabilizes, it causes fluctuations in the timestream. You experienced small jumps when we first arrived at the research facility. I calculated that placing myself in the correct position during the deliberate instability we induced would send my chassis to the past. This proved correct. My chassis was inoperable afterward, but I was able to gain control of a Spectre to carry my datacore to safety, where I awaited retrieval. During the firing sequence, I uploaded as much of my updated code as I could into your helmet, and instructions to flash a message afterward."

Jack laughed a little. It sounded too good to be true, but there was too much evidence that this sim _was_ BT for him to ignore. He only wished he'd managed to get that message before the IMC had gotten him.

“That’s… that’s incredible, BT,” he said, eventually. He had more questions, but he could finally feel his body growing heavy, his eyes starting to droop. “Thanks for telling me. I’m pretty sleepy now, though. I think I’m gonna pass out."

BT made a noise Jack hadn’t ever heard before, but he felt a squeeze on his shoulder before the hand let go. “Get some rest,” he said, and Jack fell back into sleep easily.

~

Jack woke feeling better, and a little more clear-headed. BT was, as ever, by his side. Jack wondered if he had to sleep at all - he hadn’t met many sims himself, but he’d never dared to ask before.

Lieutenant Salter checked in moments after he woke, and went through the usual motions. Now that he was more clear-headed, she asked more questions, and even answered some of his regarding his future recovery. He'd already known he had a good prognosis, but it was good to hear it out loud.

The lieutenant did more than just ask questions, though - she ran him through some tests, some stretches, and even had him get out of bed for more movement, some bending. She seemed pleased with the results, but Jack was disappointed at how wiped out that little bit of motion had left him. Before she left, she had some food brought up - actual, real food, which he inhaled too quickly to talk. 

After he ate and Salter left with the tray, it was just him and BT in the room again. “So tell me what happened, BT," Jack said, leaning back against the pillows.

BT cocked his head. "Which specific event?" he asked.

"How about... how are you a sim? In that body?"

"I insisted on participating in your rescue. However, there are no Vanguard chassis available at this time, nor would one be particularly useful for a rescue mission aboard a ship. It would have been possible to simply transport my datacore on the ship we used, I would not be able to assist in that form. I wished to participate directly in your rescue," he said, then paused, and his datacore clicked. Jack had noticed a few pauses in BT's speech already, usually on topics that would be considered personal. Or topics that involved any kind of emotion, actually. BT continued after only a couple of moments , "I wanted to see you as soon as I could. I wanted to protect you. This was a proposed solution, and although it has required some adjustment, I believe I have acclimated quickly and I am glad the commander had approved it."

Jack laughed a little. "Difficult being small, huh?" he asked.

BT made the thoughtful-sounding buzz he'd sometimes used as a response when they'd talked, back on Typhon. The familiarity made Jack’s heart clench, but it was getting easier each time, with the many reminders that this _was_ BT, that BT had survived, and had chosen to return to him. "That was not the biggest adjustment," he said after a moment. "I believe I adjusted well to the difference in structure and movement. But this body has no built-in armaments, and no room for them, which is a loss of functionality I understand but do not necessarily like." His voice sounded almost petulant, and Jack laughed at that.

BT's datacore ticked a couple of times in the way that Jack had learned to associate with him being pleased. "Instead, the biggest adjustment has been that this body provides a great deal more data than my original chassis."

"What do you mean?"

"The sensormesh. This body is meant to house human minds and replicate human sensations as closely as possible. The data this mesh produces is much more than I am used to."

"What kind of data?" Jack asked. He hadn't even been awake that long, and felt his eyes drooping already, though his mind felt much more alert than it had the last few times he’d succumbed to sleep. He felt full and pleasantly sleepy, a good change from before.

"Sensation," BT answered. "Temperature, pressure, pain," he said.

"You've told me the ambient temperature before," Jack mumbled, and BT nodded.

"The Vanguard chassis does include a singular sensor for the general meteorological conditions, but it does not contain a mesh of such sensors for localized sensation," he said. "I did not understand how that could be different. The human mind is truly a marvel. I had to learn to automate categorizing this data, and had spent the first few days with the sensations dialed back to almost their minimum settings."

"Days?" he asked. He knew it had to have been days, but this is the first time anyone had actually spoken of it to him..

"Yes. While I was installed into this body just before boarding the ship for your rescue mission, you had been unconscious for almost 83 hours after the rescue before you first woke up," BT answered.

Jack sighed in response. He couldn't pick apart what he felt at all, and getting this information didn't change anything, really. He was relieved, anxious, angry, and couldn't even figure out where these feelings came from, much less where to direct them. But BT was alive, he was _here_ , and for now, that had to be enough. That, and BT was answering his questions.

He wanted to ask how many days it had been since he had first woke up, but ended up blinking himself awake a few times before he felt BT's hand on his shoulder again. "Sleep, Jack. I will be here when you wake."

"Thanks, BT," Jack murmured, before he finally just let himself fall back into the cloudy recesses of unconsciousness.

~

Though he'd been conscious for longer periods over what had turned out to be four days since he first woke, it had apparently taken the commander three different attempts before her schedule allowed a visit that coincided with him being awake.

When she arrived, he'd been walking around the room a little with the assistance of a nurse. After he was settled back in bed, Briggs finally faced him from where she'd been conversing with BT.

"Good to have you back with us, Cooper," She said, and he laughed a little.

"Good to be back. Their hospitality was shit." He was glad it had taken some time before they could meet; he felt much more like himself than he'd been, and much more alert.

She chuckled at that, and her smile seemed genuine. "So, you up for an informal debrief?" she asked.

Jack took stock of himself, then nodded. Another reason to be grateful their meeting had been delayed, since she was apparently straight to business. "If it's a short one."

She nodded. Her easy expression settled into something much more serious and official. "I'm sure you know the questions I'm gonna ask - do you know who compromised us? Where the leak was?"

Jack frowned. "Leak? Oh... shit," he murmured; the possibility of a leak hadn't once crossed his mind. Perhaps it had a setup of some kind, though he hated the idea that anyone in the Militia might willingly sell them out to the IMC. "No sir," he answered, "I just thought I'd slipped up. Gotten unlucky."

"Damn." She didn’t look pleased, but nodded anyway. "That was always a possibility, but something tells me that's not the case. We're still looking into it. IMC channels have been hot since we got you back - a lot of heads are rolling over there, it sounds like. Unfortunately, only metaphorically for now."

Jack just nodded since that wasn't a question, and he didn't have a response.

The commander sighed, then nodded. "Alright, we noticed signs of some rough treatment, so I'm betting interrogation? Did they ask for anything in particular?"

"Yeah," he answered. He took a breath, then gestured for BT to hand him his glass of water so he could have a few swallows. "Yeah, the kind of intel you'd expect. Sensitive locations, transmission frequencies, information on the Vanguard Titans, _your_ location along with a few other Militia bigwigs, things like that."

"Do you know what they were going to do with you?"

"Yeah," he said. He looked away for a moment, uncomfortable with her piercing gaze. "Yeah. I knew."

There must have been something in his tone that somehow told her more than he’d intended her to know. "And you weren't going to let that happen, were you?" She asked.

Jack jerked his head back up to meet her eyes, and even though he didn't answer, she nodded. "I'm glad it didn't come to that, then. I appreciate your dedication, Pilot."

Jack kept his face very still. She understood his position, but it looked like she didn't understand how close it had come. He knew he’d have to talk about it to someone eventually, but he didn’t want to talk to her about it. Not yet. BT's face swung between them. "I do not understand," he said, and Briggs pursed her lips.

"Cooper, you want to have that conversation, or shall I?"

Jack thought about it for a moment. He didn’t want to talk to her, but BT? BT shouldn’t hear it from anyone else. "Nah, I'll take care of it," he said. It wouldn't be easy, but BT deserved to hear it from him. Even if Jack let the commander shoulder the burden, BT would want to ask Jack questions anyway, so it would be better to just take care of it himself. Probably.

She nodded. "Well, we're still investigating how exactly they got you, but for now, your orders are bed rest and a lot of it. Once you're good to go, we'll remove the field implant for your broken link and install a proper one for you."

Jack's left hand reached up to brush against the back of his neck, where he'd been feeling the tingles. "What...?"

"I'll let BT explain," she said. "I have to get moving, but I'll be receiving reports directly from your medic, so you'd better behave," she said sternly, but gave him a grin before she left the room.

Jack glanced over to BT, who turned to look at him fully.

"What was the commander referring to?" BT asked, and Jack sighed. Of course BT wasn't going to wait for an answer.

He took a deep breath, and looked down for a moment. He felt mostly clear-headed for now, even though he was still a little drowsy. Getting up and moving had helped, though, so he nodded and looked back up at BT. "The thing is, BT, I was in a very bad position. I was in IMC custody in a situation where rescue seemed impossible. They had already started with interrogations and beatings. Actual torture wasn't out of the question. And I had the information they were after, or at least some of it." He glanced back up at BT to find his head cocked, his datacore aperture narrowed behind his faceplate as he gazed at Jack.

But he said nothing, and Jack sighed again. "No one can stand up to that forever. I knew what they were going to do with me. After they got everything from me, they were going to take me back to the core systems. I'd get a sham trial and a public execution. No matter what I did, they were going to kill me anyway - but that knowledge means nothing after a certain point. I'd still give in, eventually."

BT hummed thoughtfully. "If sharing the information is inevitable, then... then the only way to ensure they cannot get the information from you is to self-terminate," he said, slowly, like he didn't like the conclusion he'd come to at all.

Well, Jack certainly hadn't liked it either. "Yeah," he agreed. "That's exactly it. Only, she doesn't know the whole of it," he said, and dropped his eyes to the blanket instead of BT. "It wasn't for lack of trying that I'm still here," he said quietly.

"You tried and failed," BT said, and for a moment, his voice was so flat, more than it had ever been since Jack had first linked to him. There was little inflection at all, not enough for Jack to gauge how he felt. It was disconcerting to realize how stark the change was, how far BT had apparently come.

"Yeah. I was being escorted by a pair of soldiers to the interrogation room, and I'd managed to grab one of their guns. Shot one of them, but I was tackled before I could..." he shrugged instead of finishing the sentence.

"When was this?" BT asked, voice a little less steady than it had been only moments ago.

"Honestly, I'm not sure. Hours before the... rescue?" he guessed. "From that passage where I'd uh, failed, I was taken straight to the room I woke up in when the alarms were going off. I'd never been in there before, and eventually they knocked me out in there. I have no idea how long I was out. From there, I… escaped, I guess, and made my way to the airlock."

BT hummed again. "Your implant ceased to transmit data only an hour and twenty minutes before we boarded the ship and released you."

Jack laughed quietly, but it was a sad laugh. BT made a small noise at that, one Jack hadn't heard before, then, "Jack?"

He shook his head. "I... did I really hear you back there, BT?"

BT nodded once - apparently, he'd picked up on a few human mannerisms very quickly indeed. "Yes, I was able to transmit audio to the speakers of the room you were in."

"And... in the passages? The vents?"

BT shook his head. "No. I had no way to communicate with you outside of the lights I used to guide you to the airlock, and the doors I was able to open and close. You reacted well, however, and even took good initiative to avoid conflict."

Jack closed his eyes and leaned back. "I heard you, though," he said. "I _heard_ you on the way. I knew you were gone, and I still listened to you."

BT made that noise again, and it sounded sad maybe, or confused. "Jack," he said, and Jack felt BT's hand grip his shoulder again. "I... I am very distressed with the knowledge of how many 'close calls' you have survived, that I may have failed in my most basic objectives."

Jack smiled at that. "I know," he said. "I... BT, you know that's what it was like for me, too, right? We were a team. I..." he began, but stopped. He wasn't sure just how to say what he felt without feeling foolish, but even if BT could understand what he felt, BT wouldn't find it foolish at all. He _knew_ that, he did, but still he hesitated.

"Jack?" BT urged quietly.

"I can't explain it," Jack finally said. "Everything I come up with is too vague, or just not right. But, I guess, just... you're my friend, BT. We went through some shit together, and... for a human, that makes us close. It makes you important to me. And even though I'd only been your friend for a day, for me, that was still enough time to form a strong attachment."

"Jack, it was-" BT began, but Jack sat up then, and shook his head and BT's hand fell from his shoulder.

"And then I _lost_ you, BT. I thought you were destroyed, and I handled it the best I could. I had nightmares about you throwing me out of your cockpit while you hurtled towards the core. Can you understand that? The _thought_ of losing me just distresses you, but BT, I _did_ lose you!"

BT's optic clicked as he studied Jack. "I did not understand at the time," he said after a moment. "I think I understand now - contemplating the possibility of losing you causes... discomfort. Pain. But it was your reality."

Jack couldn't keep eye contact, but he nodded and leaned back again. "Yeah, it was," he said.

BT hummed again. "I am _sorry_ , Jack."

Jack glanced at him - BT's posture was so earnest, leaning towards Jack like he couldn't help it, but his hands were firmly gripping his legs. His optic was trained on Jack, like it often was when he hadn't been inside the Titan, when they'd had a few moments of downtime to talk.

He couldn't help it - he smiled, though it was a little bitter. "I know, BT.” He didn’t want to dwell on this anymore, though, so cast about for a change of topic. “I can't help but notice, you... sound a lot more human these days, BT. What changed?"

BT leaned back at that, and made a pleased click. "The consensus is that I have made a great deal of progress in individual and emotional development since I linked with you, and after many talks with Commander Briggs and technician Haroldson. I have learned a lot. I have felt a great variety of things. I do not always understand, and it is not always pleasant," he said, and Jack chuckled.

"That's the way of it, yeah. Emotions are messy. Often difficult."

"I do not wish to return to a simpler state of understanding, of being," BT answered immediately.

"You thought about that?"

"Yes. I spoke with the commander about this a great deal. I was always determined to speak with you about it, as well. I believe my link with you has been the catalyst for a number of these changes, and I wish to remain linked with you. However... it sounds like our link has not been as beneficial to you," he said, then hesitated. He didn't breathe, but he did click a few times, a noise he'd made once or twice before, one Jack was coming to understand as BT needing a few moments to think. "Perhaps you wish to simply remove the damaged implant and proceed without linking to me again," he finally said, and Jack sat up again and looked at him.

"No!" Jack said quickly, and this time he reached for BT, though he couldn't do more than snag a hand on the sleeve of the Militia fatigues BT wore. "No, BT, why would you think that? Didn't I _just_ tell you we were friends? That I hated losing you?"

BT met his gaze and cocked his head. "It seems the negative outcomes have outweighed the positive," he answered. "I would understand if this was your choice. Emotions are difficult."

"BT," Jack began, then took a deep breath. It was difficult, but he knew he had to be gentle, he _wanted_ to be gentle, because this was all new to BT. While it was true that humans didn't always handle emotions well either, he didn't want to hurt BT if he could help it. It would happen eventually, but he took a moment to calm himself a little, because it didn't have to happen now. "They are difficult," he said slowly. "But it can be worth it. You have to choose it sometimes, and sometimes it's not easy, but... knowing what I do now? Having gone through all of this? I'd choose to do it again. You're worth it, BT. Knowing you has been... a privilege I'm grateful I got to experience."

BT just stared at him for a moment, and he emitted a higher-pitched hum than Jack had ever heard him use before. "BT?" he asked.

"Jack," BT answered, and he sounded so lost that Jack himself was at a loss for words. "I do not... I am unsure how to explain, but your words have provoked a profound emotional response," he said, after a moment.

"Good or bad?" Jack asked.

"Good," BT answered. "Mostly good," he amended after a moment. "I do not want to link to another Pilot, Jack. I want to link with you again."

Jack smiled, and forced himself to lean back again. He was exhausted, but he wanted to keep talking. "Me too, BT," he said, then almost sat up because he didn't want to forget he'd had a question, too. "What was that about a proper implant?"

"Neural links require an implant that facilitates communication between a Titan and a human brain. Every Pilot helmet is equipped with a simplified implant designed to facilitate a new neural link in the case of an emergency."

"Like Typhon," Jack said.

"Yes. You are the first individual to have been promoted to Acting Pilot in the field, the first to initiate a neural link with the field implant - all of the current Militia Vanguard Pilots received the full surgical implant that allows more data transfer between Pilot and Titan. It seems the field implant is not as durable, as yours was damaged and finally ceased transmitting while you were in IMC custody."

He reached to touch the back of his neck. That had to be what he'd been feeling recently. "I never felt it," he said, and BT hummed at him.

"That is the ideal outcome," he said in response. "I believe that if we had both returned successfully from Typhon, the field implant would have been replaced by the Militia, as Commander Briggs had promoted you from Acting Pilot to Pilot during that mission. The promotion would necessitate the exchange for a full neural link implant; the field implant was only to be used in emergency, and was not meant to facilitate a long-term link."

Jack nodded. "If, uh, if the commander had had me replaced, back when we finally rendezvoused with her, would the new candidate have been given a field implant?"

"Yes. Your helmet - Lastimosa's helmet - would have been deactivated, our link severed, and the new pilot would link with me through the same manner you and I had linked, with a new helmet."

Jack looked up at the ceiling of the room. "Why did you ask to... keep me? Why didn't you want a new pilot, one that had been properly trained?"

BT buzzed softly, and was silent longer than Jack had expected. When he finally dared a glance, he found BT observing him quietly. "At the time, I could not have explained," he said, finally. "After my recent experiences, and the things I have learned, it is quite simply that I like you. We _are_ a very effective team; while the adjustment period of another new pilot might have cost us some time, this wasn't the true motivator for my request. Underneath the other facts is the truth that I like you and I value our friendship. I did not want to lose it."

Jack smiled and lay back again. "Me too, BT. I didn't want to give you up," he said with a laugh. "I'm... glad, you know. That you didn't get a new Pilot. If you'd asked me that a month ago, my answer would have been different, but... you're here," he murmured.

"I am here," BT agreed. "You should rest."

"Yeah," he said, nodding and sliding down the bed a bit and closing his eyes. "Yeah, I'm tired."

BT said nothing, but Jack could still sense him, could still hear the soft hum BT's core always emitted, the occasional clicking he'd set off. He wasn't as afraid this was a dream anymore, and fell back asleep easily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, this chapter was HARD to get completed. I've edited it so many times that I've gone cross-eyed, almost. I hope y'all enjoyed! <3

**Author's Note:**

> I don't normally post works in progress, so this is a first for me, but I'm interested to see how this goes. :)
> 
> I've got a few more chapters completed, and I'll have the next up within a couple of days, and we'll see what happens after that.


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